out of the blue

"Love should be put into action!"
screamed the old hermit.
Across the pond an echo
tried and tried to confirm it.

-Elizabeth Bishop, "Chemin de Fer"

You know those days where each thing flows directly into the next, and at the end of it all you're not sure where any one stopped and the next begun? I just had a day like that. It was immensely enjoyable. Thanks to Elana, Sarah, Danko and Rusty in particular for their company. It was fun.

Thoughts

• – Elizabeth Bishop just feels good to read on the bus. Oh yeah. I read poetry. For fun.
• – Even though I left over an hour before 12:00, I still arrived at Elana's house within a minute of when I was aiming.
• – Elana's grandfather is, consistent with reports, quite awesome.
• – Elana's grandfather's house is only two miles away from Sarah's house.
• – To walk in the rain can be one of life's greatest plesasures.
• – Sarah and I share a common pleasure in spur-of-the-moment meetings and eating Tillamook ice cream.
• – Cedar Mill Public Library is very close to Sarah's house, and Danko was there to fulfill my hopes and dreams.
• – Danko wasn't nearly as surprised as he ought to have been when I showed up behind him while he was canoodling a drinking fountain.
• – Sarah and I fulfilled our vital mission in Thriftway, much to Danko's surprise and the Library's delight.
• – Sarah's family is both willing to welcome impromptu dinner companions and entertaining to dine with.
• – The art show for high school students in which Rebecca (Sarah-sister) entered a few pieces was very good, and near enough to my house to beg for a ride back.
• – Rusty was willing to stay for a bit and eat a hamburger (cooked by me!) when he dropped my sister off after their health class.
• – Reflecting on these events is nearly as pleasant as experiencing them.

Wow. This is utterly awesome. Holy cow. Look at this.

http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/

(Stolen from Sarah)

"Lacking bear pepper-spray, I walked home across the garden last night singing very loud bear songs, which went something along the lines of, "Lalala, I am singing very loudly to alert the bear to my presence, Lalala because most of the websites I've found talk about making noise and giving bears lots of time to get away, Lalala also I do not want to startle a bear at all because according to everything I've read on the subject bears do not like being startled." You don't have to worry about rhymes with bears. They don't mind about rhymes. Or tunes. Or scansion. Frankly, hypothetical bears are a very easy sort of audience."

–Neil Gaiman

(I am proud to say that I have sometimes been known to sing bear songs when hiking. Gaiman's words send a wave of nostalgia over me. I should hike more. And sing more.)

[And, on another note, mockups for the next Neil Gaiman collection of short stories, entitled "Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders." Fragile Things is due out in Autumn, and I plan to own it within a couple of days of its release.]

I made it through the long drive from Spokane and Portland, dragging with me my parents and living supplies (like a toothbrush, clothes, art supplies, this computer…). I'm back in Portland! Let the festivities ensue. I may be very busy for the first week or so, and I hope to get a job eventually, but I expect to see a lot of people nonetheless. You are forewarned.

My first of four finals is over and done with. No more poetry. Actually, it's the class that I'm saddest to see go (besides Ethics, for which I still have to write a paper). I knew everything I needed to know, but I had a heck of a time analyzing the poem that we were given. "For the Union Dead", by Robert Lowell. We had to analyze these lines:

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

Yeah, tell me if you've got anything. Later I may post something along the lines of what I wrote, even though its not a very thorough job. After all, it was in-class, hand-written, and at a time when all I wanted to do was to get out of there!

By the way, if you're interested, I put together a database-driven poetry page that has everything we read in that class besides the collections of poetry (The Wellspring by Sharon Olds and Human Wishes by Robert Hass). It was a combination web design and poetry-studying project, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Lots of practice for my long-term blog programming project. The code in the background is anything but pretty, but it's quite functional as long as you don't use the admin system much. I still have a few bugs to work out there.

If you do want to go through the poetry we read, I'd suggest ordering by date read. Dr. Marshall worked out a pretty good order in which to read them. Lots of good stuff in there.

It probably says something about me that when I read a headline like "African Union Official Is Hacked to Death in Darfur," I immediately think "Blasted militant nerds…."

There are many things in life that have eluded me: the perfect phrasing of a poetic line, that uncanny ability to fold one's tongue into knots that was so vogue in elementary school, the satisfactory completion of a culinary experiment. But tonight I was pleased. Tonight I cooked a never-before-(personally)-attempted dish. A simple salmon linguine. Not impressive to those of you who are born chefs, but nearly unprecedented for me.

Sure, I can cook those things that are familiar of long experience. I have few problems with omlettes, or pies, or even pot stickers. But when I journey into the realm of dishes that I haven't yet tangled with, I always fall prey to some small blunder. Perhaps I forget an ingredient, or cook something too long, or forget to perform one step before another. Not this time. Tonight, I avoided all such snares. I timed things rather well, and when everything came together, it was perfection. I was pleased. So, if you want a salmon linguine with a Greek salad and foccacia bread topped with garlic and olive oil, come to me.

"In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes."

-Dan Simmons, Hyperion

(I'm not sure if this offends anyone, but I thought it was a very good and legitimate use of profanity. Like some profane poems, it falls apart without the "offensive" word.)

"The first temptation of Sakyamuni was desire, but he saw that it led to
fulfillment and then to desire, so that one was easy."

"Suppose, before they said silver or moonlight or wet grass, each poet
had to agree to be responsible for the innocence of all the suffering on
earth,

because they learned in arithmetic, during the long school days, that if
there was anything left over,

you had to carry it."

– Spring Drawing 2 by Robert Hass, Human Wishes