Dome's day

When I was a kid geodesic domes were what the future was going to look like. Thus far that hasn't happened, and it's hard to know what to feel about that. I mean, it's not like I really got attached to them. Seeing this team put a couple up is invigorating, though.

Loss leader

Something I like to do here every now and then is put up a poem I like.  The reasons why it has to be one I like should be obvious.  Anyway, this is a classic exemplar of the villanelle, a form I have a great deal of fondness for.

                           

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.  Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and nnames and where it was you meant
to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch.  And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones.  And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

It's a fairly popular poem, and I think it can be misunderstood.  The speaker isn't bulletproof. If you listen the tone is philosophical, not blithe.  It doesn't deny the anxiety resulting from loss. It speaks of trying to channel it.  (Write it!)

Then again in texture, in mood, it's not a heavy poem either.  It achieves lightness in a paradoxical way.  Which is an admission I'll never really be able to explain it.

Bet you say that to all the girls

For more info on what she's talking about, see here.

I actually went to a seminar once where the instructor told us about this technique. To be fair, it was one among others. Still, though, he did confer on it a certain validity. I couldn't get into it, though. If negging works for you then, best case scenario, you become a psychologically abusive boyfriend. I just wasn't ready to commit to the abusive boyfriend lifestyle.

Friday Random Ten: Observed

One thing about taking DVDs out from the library: you stand a good chance of missing one episode at least just because it's ruinced.  Hate to think what that reveals about my fellow patrons.
  

1. Patsy Cline - True Love
2. Chic - Everybody Dance (Clap Your hands)
3. Elvis Costello & the Attractions - No Action
4. Radiohead - Hunting Bears
5. Yo La Tengo - Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind
6. R.E.M. - We Walk
7. Brian Eno - Dragging Me Backwards
8. Roxy Music - Trash
9. David Bowie - If You Can See Me
10. Sarah Vaughan - Can't Get Out of This Mood
  

Sonnet fail

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Nah.
~William Shakespeare on one of his less inspired days.

Actually I do plan to do another poetry post soon.  I didn't get to it tonight because I was distracted by installing a new phone.  (The answering machine I'd been using since 2000 or so was falling apart, and it seemed more efficient to have the phone and ans machine combined at this point.)  So, something to look forward to there.

2 thoughts

1: I just took out the garbage a few minutes ago.  When I threw the bag into the dumpster I heard something scurry out from behind it.  Looked down, sure enough there was a skunk walking among us.  Obviously I gave it a wide birth while I was on my way back in, because obviously I didn't want to get sprayed.  (They can also bite, if you really annoy them.)  One good thing about the new place, though, is that there's enough room out back to get stuff done regardless.  At my previous residence I saw a skunk near the trash cans one winter night and immediately made a u-turn.

2: I remember I was in college during the first World Trade Center attack.  You know, the one with the truck full of explosives that didn't actually do what it set out to do.  Not just in college, I was also on the school paper.  A story occurred to me regarding possible upticks in actions against people of Middle Eastern descent.  I thought getting some white supremacists on the record might lead to a good - or at least attention getting story - and I considered going undercover.  Bad, bad idea in retrospect, and it's good that it died from inertia.  While I'm fairly stoical about a lot of things, expressions of hatred do visibly get under my skin.  Also even though I'm entirely of Protestant British Isles heritage, some byplay of genetics has left me looking faintly Jewish.  Like both Jews and antisemites have noticed this.  So I wasn't going to cut it as a fake neo-Nazi.

Saturday Random Ten: Musin' on a Saturday afternoon, evening, etc

I eat breakfast relatively late on Saturday, at a nearby restaurant/diner I like.  It does give me the "opportunity", though, to listen to top 40 radio.  Now even at the top-of-the-charts level, I don't think all contemporary music is crap.  I haven't grown old in that way yet.  But it does offend me to find that people like Ryan Seacrest are dj's now.  A dj is supposed to be a desperate idealist/possible drug casualty with deep passions and feverish tastes, not a network talking head who "likes" what he's told to like.

Since the '96 telecommunications act, I've seen radio be taken over by megaconglomerates and subsequently shrink.  The number of formats has become ever fewer and ever stricter.  The influence of the medium has shrunk as well.  When/if people still buy music, they're sometimes influenced by blogs and other press, sometimes by what plays in the background of TV shows.  The number of people taking musical cues from radio has plummeted.  This is sad, but also funny.  By making the investment in multiple radio stations around the country, the corporations have made them less of a wise investment.
     

1. Neko Case - Vengeance Is Sleeping*
2. Yo La Tengo - The Room Got Heavy
3. Arcade Fire - No Cars Go
4. Diana Krall - I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry
5. TV on the Radio - Halfway Home
6. Chic - Real People
7. Sarah Vaughan - Ain't Misbehaving
8. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Third Stone From the Sun
9. Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates
10. Martin Denny - Caravan
     
*