writing since when...

hear then

their language not mine

 

now

night

first

snow

 

 

zuihitsu

Frayed twigs and sharpened sticks, used as brushes, awaken narratives. Using these tools, I like sketching dawn to dusk, mimicking traditions of burnt chert, flaked tools, and history inside the earth. I find fossils in the stones surrounding buildings - the footprint of a bird, a fish, a coral shell as tightly furrowed as spring bud.

 

A knawed willow sometimes smells of wintergreen. Trees perceive us, alter their behavior.

I have seen you, tree, looking at me. Someone's dressed your wound with paint and sand.

 

Warned, I avoid brownfields and clearcut, parks at night, and open, lonely spaces.

 

I don’t own a gun, but can shoot one. My brother-in-law's elk hide on the wash line, hung next to a pink bath mat. I think, uncle, said my niece, you shot that mat too?

 

You must ask questions. 

 

Could I kill for meat? I eat fish instead.

 

In this dream, a cave contains cedar planks and charcoal ink.  Sooty roof rock falls over time, becomes more floor.  

 

I climbed canyon walls into a cliff dwelling, was surprised to find a Korean family. We ate oranges together.

 

What is brought in is taken out. Blue-green shadows. White firs smelling of citrus. 

 

In Goyang is a cave containing 153 souls. My student in Guro was a mudang. She spoke to the dead. Brush your hair 100 times to make it shine, mother said. Avoid ghosts. I consent, absorb her social distancing.

 

 

Pray for mountains and seasons. I don't eat meat. The aroma of chicken wings, of charcoal and fat, seeps from the corner tavern.

 

 

Truth and Reconciliation.

 

 

Corona vitae is a toxic terror. The number of masks we have discarded kills. Will we always carry carnivore hearts? My mother forgave the disease that ate her. 

 

 

Whale fall. 

 

Quiets rooms, this quiet mind, which has become so important, so valuable. 

 

 

   

 

  

 

for kevin

 At this time every year I miss you. Our life together seems a dream. Today I light incense, pray,

"Stay a little longer near the surface of my heart."

 

Neronian

Mousterian

axes out

but then again 

a tiny bird point

kills a deer

we're wondering

what is it we've made clear?

and then

a wren.

common

We have names

many

who knew

 us

 names too

an old pine, christmas

                                                                                

Dawn. Set wings among your branches, bracken at your feet.

 

Draw needles through nests, root deeper, shadow breasts. 

 Fields have spread. 

Duff muffed, shed winds, remain refuge, a manger.

 

The moon rises midday. Darkness swells at half past four.

More snow.  Warm hearts slowed sleep deeply. 

 

 Midnight leans in,

shims winter boughs, makes space for a slate-coloured child, 

not a god,

and stars.

 

 

 

praying

digits conjoined

pulled apart

old cold's

right -

winter's in

the heart

wrong obrigada arigato

about obrigada

(obligātus, obligō)

obligare

 

arigatai

arigatogozaimasu

 

 

Sonhe 夢 (yume)

 

夢

 

It is 1543. I see a storm begins.

Tanegashima, Kagoshima, Kyushu.

デウス (Deusu)

Births will follow wombs

oceans

wounds.

Lúcio De Sousa, The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan: Merchants, Jesuits and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Slaves, Leiden: Brill, 2019, 594 pp. ISBN 9789004388079. $217.00.

Whereas partus sequitur ventrem ("the birth follows the womb") laws and their effects on the lives of enslaved women and their children are well understood in the Atlantic context, they remain entirely unstudied in the case of the slave trade in Asia, in particular Portuguese Asia, the string of entrepôts between India and Japan.  McManus, Stuart 

Slavery in Medieval Japan Thomas Nelson Monumenta NipponicaVol. 59, No. 4 (Winter, 2004), pp. 463-492 (30 pages) Published by: Sophia University

 

https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12499

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/751144

conto de peixe fish tale

roupa velha, farrapo velho.
caras de bacalau
‘punheta’

explicar

Mas nossos ouvidos estão frios.

explicar

Marinheiros
punheta à la bacalhau

elogiar peixes

 

old clothes, old rag.
bacalau guys
‘Wank’ off

explain 

But our ears are cold.

explain

Seamen
jerk off to cod

to praise fish

 Far from home

why not go farther?

3

 1

knawed 

black willow

smells of mint

2

sky blue

branches

black

that

red sumac

3

noise

tapping

teeth

journey

 

 

your old burled hands

buried in cursive, 

looking for work.

 

Do something with yourself.

 

blue books

 

 also consider the 5 Blue Zones of health and happiness

 

BLUE BOOK

A blue book or bluebook is an almanac, buyer's guide or other compilation of statistics and information. The term dates back to the 15th century, when large blue velvet-covered books were used for record-keeping by the Parliament of England. The Oxford English Dictionary first records such a usage in 1633.

 USA

belloq's storyville 1898-1917

https://64parishes.org/entry/new-orleans-blue-books

 

blue book tests 1920's Indiana

A blue book is literally a book with about 20 lined pages that college, graduate, and sometimes high school students use to answer test questions. More specifically, a blue book refers to the type of exams that require students to use these books to complete the test.

In practice, this means that you should be able to write a good solid paragraph (say, 200-250 words) which should fill one page in your Blue Book.

Kelley's New and Used Car Blue Book

 

The Blue Book

Debbie Strayer and Susan Simpson     Common Sense Press      20 March 2018

The Learning Language Arts Through Literature series begins with The Blue Book. This complete beginning phonics and language arts program artfully integrates phonics instruction with all of the other areas of language arts that need to be covered at first grade level: reading skills, spelling, handwriting, and grammar. The course also teaches more higher-order thinking skills than do many other first grade programs.

Based on Dr. Ruth Beechick's ideas about learning, the course does not assume that children learned to read in kindergarten. However, children should be able to identify letters, and it would be very helpful if they know some or most of the primary sounds of the letters. Early in the course, the first group of letters—a, n, r, and t—is introduced. In this same lesson, students learn about consonants and vowels as well as blending letters to form words. This progression will likely be too fast for children who do not already know letters and sounds.

INDIA

“Your face is blue, madam. Like that of Krishna,” the taxi driver said affably, as he took me back to my hotel.

In Hinduism there are three main deities: Brahma the creator, Shiva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver. Vishnu spends eternity sleeping, until when called upon in a crisis, he wakes and like the most powerful of superheroes saves the world. 

One name for him is Nilakantha, the blue-necked one, because of a story that he drank a pot of poison to save creation. So blue is a reminder that evil exists but can be contained, through courage and right actions. 

Krishna is a manifestation of Vishnu. His name means “dark,” and like Vishnu he is portrayed with blue skin. 

In addition to being associated with the gods, blue—through the indigo dye—is also historically linked with India. In the first century a. d. the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote about “indicum, a production of India,” which “yields a marvelous combination of purple and cerulean [sky blue].”

He suggested that the dye was a kind of slime sticking to the scum on river reeds. It actually comes from a bush with small green leaves that when dried and fermented in a dye vat look pretty scummy, which explains the misunderstanding. 

In Pliny’s time, indigo would probably be shipped to the Roman port of Ostia in the form of hard cakes. It was valuable enough to fake: Pliny reports people selling “indigo cakes” made from dried pigeon dung, stained with just enough genuine dye to pass as real.

Indigo is intensive to process, and has historically been cultivated where labor is cheap. It had a brief heyday on slave plantations in the Caribbean and South Carolina in the 18th century, pricing the Indian plantations out of the market. But when slavery was abolished, the British planted indigo again in Bengal, where weather conditions are ideal. 

Because laborers were subject to abuse, there were two “blue mutinies”—one in 1860 and another in 1917. The second was initiated by the 47-year-old Hindu lawyer Mohandas (later known as Mahatma) Gandhi, as one of his first acts of peaceful civil disobedience against British rule, which finally led to Indian independence in 1947.

AFRICA

 Indigo in Africa

“Indigo grows wild in almost every part of the African Coast … Besides the Indigo, there is another plant which the natives use as a blue dye, which appears to impart a more indelible color, and which, should it stand the test of experiment, might also be cultivated.”

–British Report of the Committee of the African Institution: West African Produce, 25 March 1808
Africans have used indigo for centuries as symbol of wealth and fertility. Indigo-dyed cotton cloth excavated from caves in Mali date to the 11th century and many of the designs are still used by modern West Africans. The Tauregs, “blue men” of the Sahara, are famous for their indigo robes, turbans, and veils that rub blue pigment into their skin. Yoruba dyers of Nigeria produce indigo cloth called adire alesso using both tie-and-dye and resist dye techniques, while honoring Iya Mapo, as the patron god of their exacting craft. Dyers of the Kanuri (Cameroon and Nigeria) and Fulani (modern Niger and Burkina-Faso) ethnic groups popularized indigo near Lake Chad and through portions of West Africa.

Most African dyers are women including among the Yoruba, the Malike and Dogan of Mali, and the Soninke of Senegal. Dyeing is also performed by men among the Mossi (Burkina-Faso) and the Hausa, who have produced indigo-dyed textiles in the ancient city of Kano (Northern Nigeria) since the 15th century.

 

 

houses

 

Corbin Boyd  Brickmason born a slave freedman specialised in chimneys N.C. 1817 -1917

 https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000151

 

 

 

dream equations

garden room

 dokudami 

朝顔     asagao

つばき   tsubaki

タンポポ  tanpopo

あじさい  ajisai

ローズ

菊 kiku

桜の花 sakura no hana

Rocky Mountain Parnassia (K.D. Koenig)

Himalayan Clematis

Clematis Montana

ranunculae

5 petaled large white Buttercup

Lespedeza Japanese clover

unknown - four petaled, white fingered

Mochringia laterflora

Blackthorn or sloe

Prunus spinose   seiyosumono 

Lantana

Iris

Asclepias verticillata  Whorled Milkweed 

Galinsoga

Greater beggar's tick

prostrate camomile

tridax procumbens (L.) L compositae Coatbuttons

bidens alba/ pilosa L. Shepherd's needle, common beggar's tick

Bidens bipinnata L. compositae  Spanish needles

Perityle emoryi Tom. compositae Emory's rock daisy

Asteracae

White Marsh Marigold 

 

 

entopic phenomena - my year of repair

Entoptic phenomena are visual effects whose source is within the eye itself. In Helmholtz's words: "Under suitable conditions light falling on the eye may render visible certain objects within the eye itself. These perceptions are called entoptical."

 

this my year of repair

where I indoctrinated

break open

see 

that a tree 

is not a tree

but a psychic space

of greed and grief

power and sorrow

history's witnesses

Love them.

n o t e s

 tanka

31 syllables

a single unbroken line

_______________________

wheezing 

inhaler 

albuterol 

write these 3 in cuneiform clay

bake and break

_________________________

 Why did I, Richard Mayhew, 

think so much of you that I wrote your name without a nudge

of a note to remember you by?

Oh yes

these trees

these places of 

these spaces of

https://hyperallergic.com/588448/richard-mayhew-transcendence/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlYbStrFOuc 

 

write Richard Mayhew in seeds

water and grow

know he's 96 years

on this earth

a Sequoyah

____________________________________________

 

 

 grace not competition

 consider candling the egg

my biofog

walking the river

On either side,

punctured

shores

urge colder, colder.

Warmer water

refuses,

slipping

under the quick quake

submergence

of 

crusts,

shouts

past

frozen

ledges,

unbroken.

Black and bottle green

boil pale,

resist

linear impulses,

stagger through 

swag wash or

shrub carr.

Converging

channels

reach forward, 

hover shelf ice,

disappear.

Below

thick 

river 

snow

a roar,

unquieted,

defiant.

 

 

 

 walk

Issa said

Ikkyu did

one tanka

two

or you

zuihitsu

 

Great Black Swamp

 

Great Black Swamp near Bowling Green, Ohio

Great Dismal Swamp

 

Rebecca Wynn/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Moscow Nights

 Речка движется и не движется
Вся из лунного серебра
Песня слышится и не слышится
В эти тихие вечера

Rechka dvizhetsya i ne dvizhetsya
Vsya iz lunnogo serebra
Pesnya slyshitsya i ne slyshitsya
V eti tikhiye vechera

The river moves and does not move
All of moon silver
The song is heard and not heard
On these quiet evenings

- from Moscow Nights  

composer Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi and poet Mikhail Matusovsky 

wrote the song in 1955 with the title "Leningradskie Vechera" 

first snow

9 am

 

Undercover Kitty - Neko no Minūsu (pun)

 

ダメ　「ダめ」  name  - an imperative - not allowed

えさ  esa - animal +

やん  suffix "yan" - familiar animal

ネコの  neko no - my cat

 

 

 ネコのミヌース (映画)

 

   

      Neko no Minūsu

 

Neko no Minūsu - Undercover Kitty (film)​ 

Undercover Kitty is a 2001 Dutch film, 

based on the children's novel Minoes by Annie M.G. Schmidt.

https://jisho.org/word/518696c9d5dda7b2c604590f