All aboard. People I very much appreciate:

Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Monumental Inaccuracy

 
As can be seen in this Normaphoto, the figures of ... 

                                         [Normaphoto in Golden Gate Park,San Francisco]
 ... two Weimar "sturm und strang" luminaries in poetry/dramatic arts, Johann Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, have been updated. 
 
Unfortunately, the modification has proved less than successful. As the photo shows, Schiller is depicted as shorter and older than his friend, Goethe, when in reality he was 19 centimeters taller and 10 years younger.
 
 

 

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Sunday, November 19, 2023

Dawn of the Romantic Era

  

[page: Mr. Rexroth's book "100 More Poems from the Japanese"]
[geodoodle:  Masaoka-san looking up at Kenneth Rexroth's translations] 

[geopoem: with Masaoka Shiki's poem in mind after snow trip in Sierras around 40 years ago]

I suspect it would be useful to send and receive thoughts back and forth trough time in positive and constructive ways, sort of like a cultural climacteric. A good example would be Austria, around year 1800, when Classical music went through Schuberty.


 

Monday, November 13, 2023

Anthrozoology and Football-Origin

 

[geodoodle]


Illustration over this text is an x-ray of a mummified football found recently in Rome. A team of anthrozoologists was called in and determined the specimen in excess of 2000 years old. Signs of skeletal trauma suggest the poor creature had been repeatedly kicked and thrown --modern science refers to it as Peditesphera.

Exhaustive research of surviving Greco-Roman sports literature supports the theory that p.-sphera replaced earlier, solid marble balls after centuries of goal-kicking and pass-receiving injuries to players. 

Later, Ius Animalis Actisvarum (animal rights activists) developed a method of inflating rubber sheaths with compressed air and modern footballs appeared. The immediate predecessors were free to rejoin the evolutionary pageant, grow wings etc. and are now known as ducks.  

Monday, October 30, 2023

Bushtit and Plenum

                                            [Normaphoto--psaltriparus minimus]

Bird, with only
Sense of a moment--
What you get condensing
Universe to irreducible.
Feathers included.

 

Friday, October 20, 2023

Idealizing The Average


                    

[from our bookshelves and beyond]

[Normaphoto-geodoodle]
We measure
By our lives
Below, above.
We treasure
What we love,
What survives,
What we are:
Dream and source
Set our course
Star to star.

 

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Elegy For A Raconteur

 

[Normaphoto]      

 The moving moon and stars
Are part of our moment.
And we, theirs. We wake
In one another's prayers
Into what happened last 
To a disappearing past.
The cosmos may be deduced
       By shadow cast on
       A bright sunny day.