Going to the dentist within the hour. Kids not yet dressed. We just had brekkie. Listening to a radio article on Dimitri Shostokovich.
I must get my poems mailed to Morton Marr today. Also, want to work on some haiku. Will have to go to library to work so wife can use the house computer.
Am drinking bush tea. My wife just proposed not buying any more coffee for the house. I’ll probably still buy a cup or two outside.
Francis Poulenc will peform on PT.
NIE has confirmed we have more of a terrorist threat now than at the time of the 9-11 attacks. Mary Louise Kelly reported from Washington. But administration officials defended theirselves saying they have been saying this too. Soooh…. what should we do now, Karl Rove? David Addington? Just keep on pouring money and troops into Iraq?
Earthlog timedate 0336-24September2006.
After our dinner at the greasy spoon, we walked back, one of us pushing the stroller, Annie Franck on her push-scooter. Annie-Franck had trouble keeping up. She was pretty frustrated after her mama bade her push it along on the grass. “It hits against my ankles!” I picked up the scooter and carried it a ways.
Later, after calming her down, I adjusted the height. We decided we would study grasses. Today’s lesson was on digitaria and cynodon varieties, how to identify them, how to combat them if we so choose. One thing I’m loathe to do is use any herbicides.
Today’s Japanese word is sakana, meaning “fish.”
I think we’ll watch “Howl’s Castle” in Japanese now, while Mama naps. Maybe later we’ll walk again, picking up cans and looking for grass specimens. I may be more about grama then ever before.
Earthlog timedate 022821September2006. Autumnal equinox. Thor’s day.
Just been back from the zoo, a dozen hours or so ago. Amazing place, Jacksonville’s Zoological Gardens.
I recall the way the fruit bats grumbled at each other if two went at the same time toward a bowl of fruit.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo
www.williamcalvin.com/teaching/bonobo.htm
Japanese word for the day is sentakuki, which means “washing machine.”
22:58-15September2006
Almost quarter to twenty-three hundred on a Friday night, this fifteenth of September. This last week has been barren for me, artistically. Depression, or melancholia, as I prefer to call the crippling sadness had me in its clutches. Melancholia fills me with worries that paralyzes my mind, freezes my tongue, cleaves my mind again and again so that I am not one in my purpose but scatterbrained. Melancholia teams with devil drink, who seems to enhance the way I think, but muddles up my mind so blind, so blind I find myself again in bind.
But now is Friday night, Freya tag’s forgiving darkness, ushering the way into the hall of the Sabbath, to the promise, the reward, deserved or not, that the Father G-d won for us in his great labours those first six days of the week. Excuse me a moment, while I turn up the radio. Masani is hosting her weekly jazz program from Atlanta, wafting the light eternal tripping tunes over the pine woods and farms of Georgia to our coastal lowlands. Hear comes a Cuban salsa on piano… Listen if you can, listen to my mind waves:
A few hours later, the jazz is still playing out of the Bose radio in the corner to the right of me, the horns wailing, moaning, the bass guitar marking an upbeat rhythm, and my half a pink grapefruit is waiting on a white saucer, stainless steel spoon in accompaniment to the still life just left of my left wrist.
Oh, my two bits of wisdom for the dawn: never be afraid to let your light shine, and… oh, what WAS that second one? I wrote it on the back of that little church donations envelope I have not yet used: ah, ah! Here it is… I meant to write to you all some advice on “how to stay alive while you’re getting your poetry together, sending it off to be published, and sustaining your effort.”
The two tie in quite nicely, I think now. Certainly, if you’re convinced you do have a light to shine, and you ought to let it shine, then you probably will have more staying power for the second objective, “staying alive” while becoming a poet.
I’m writing this to you, you may notice above, as a forty-five year young man, i.e. two score and five years of life on this planet. Assuming I didn’t just wake up yesterday, I’ve been managing life, maybe not “successfully” in New York Book Review terms, or according to the GQ and Esquire crowd, or even by the Mother Jones set. But hey, success to one person may not mean a whit to another. What was it Faulkner said? I think it’s something to the effect of his idea of success “having a pint of good whiskey in one pocket, and a good book in the other;” forgive me if I don’t do justice by this paraphrasing.
Now, if you’ll forgive me another interruption, I’m off to get another fix of something, I think some very strong java. (My wife finished off the last of that cheap cabernet). Aloha! (Earth trek log 06:07_16September2006).
இயல்வது கரவேல் Never stop learning
—the Tamil poet of the Auvaiyar, Athichoodi
Learn Cherokee
Our first featured Cherokee (Tsalagi) letter for the day:
D a, pronounced “ah;”
R eh;
T i, prnounced “ee” So far, the memnonic is DRT or Dirt. a, eh, ee, the first three vowels.
Let’s do the other two vowels:
The next are a little harder, they sound oh, ooh, uh. But I can’t easily draw them. “oh” looks like a little lobster. “ooh” looks like a capital O with a nose on the right side, sort of turning his nose up at I don’t know what. “uh” is easy, it looks like an “i.” Exactly. Just an “i.” Only in Tsalagi we pronounce it “uh,” kind of like a primitive sound, a grunt. To see what the little lobster “oh” vowel and the “ooh” little round O face with the upturned nose, click the link below:
www.sequoyahmuseum.org/CherokeeSyllabary.html
Now, here is one of the latest gems I’ve uncoverd, a poem by Abelardo Delgado (1931)
EL INMIGRANTE
golondrinas cortando betabel,
americanos de papel,
este Mexico-Americano
o nomás mejicano
que migra con to y familia
a los campos de colorado,
illinois, califa, y michigan
se me hace que no es más que puro gitano.
salmones en el desaije
con un ojo a las colonias
a las cuales muy pronto volverán,
no les voy
a decir porqué lo hacen
porque la verdad ni ellos saben,
quizá el cariño a la tierra
mamado de una chichi prieta,
quizá el corazón libre
que diacta la jornada,
aunque el carro esté muy viejo
y la gasolina cara.
turistas sin un centavo
de vacaciones en nebraska,
aun alabama
es un descanso de tejas.
bumerangas que la mano de dios
por este mundo tiró,
gente buena,
gente honesta,
gente víctima de su necesidad de migrar,
la lechuga o la justicia es lo que van a sembrar.
I’m going to translate it, maybe starting tomorrow. I’d like to get in touch with the poet if he is still alive, and get permission to publish his poem and translation. If any of you know more about him, please tell me, or better yet help me get in touch with him.
Poetry links:
www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/nick_carbo_2004_9.pdf
www.mundoalterno.com/decimas/colaboracion/miguel_ildefonso/poesia_chicana.htm
www.powersource.com/gallery/marijo/
www.atypical.net/poems/
Did you know there is a Tex=Mex poetry?
www.musicomh.com/albums4/tish-hinojosa_0805.htm
