Apple Foot

Recently Misinterpreted: Division of Pop Music

What I heard Huey Lewis sing: "Now the oboe may be barely breathin', but the heart of rock 'n' roll is still beating"

Evidently, this lyric is not actually taking a swipe at classical music.

NaNoWriMo

I am once again attempting National Novel Writing Month, in which one pledges to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. While I'm doing better than I did the last time I started NaNoWriMo, I'm still way behind. To be on track, I think I'd need to have written 20,000 words by today. I've got about 9,000. I have no plot, and not a whole lot of characters or setting, either. In fact, I'm so desperate that my narrator is spending significant amounts of time starting and discarding novels--steampunk, alien invasion, detective story. I'm filling up space by incorporating random writing prompts. This is not so much a novel as a series of 200-400 word exercises. I keep reminding myself, Quantity, not quality! but the quantity part is also daunting.

Promotions

At the meeting when they announced my friend's (deserved) promotion, I looked down and saw a hole in his sock.

Prompt: Foreign Language Poetry

[from Figment.com] Poetry Remix: Find a poem in a language you can't understand.  Do not look up the translation, but read it through out loud, sounding out the words and experiencing it as it appears to you on the page.  Now write your own translation of the poem.  Do not look up the real translation until you are COMPLETELY finished OR don't look it up ever and just enjoy your new poem as it is!

Vandrer-Liv (HC Anderson) (source)

Gaardhunden gjøer — dens Tænder ere saa skarpe.
En Qvinde træder i Forstuen ind,
Ak, Armod sidder paa Kjole og Kind,
Hun synger og spiller paa Harpe.

En ussel Hest bag Gjærdet søger sit Foder;
Hist holder Vognen med Dyne og Skuur,
Der sidder Manden i Guds Natur
Med Barnet, som skriger paa Moder.

Han kysser lidt og kniber til Forandring;
Snart kommer Qvinden med Penge og Brød,
Saa dier hun Barnet paa sit Skjød,
Mens Manden bereder til Vandring.


Wandering Life (a spurious translation from the Danish)

The watch dogs glower - their ears see far.
The peddler comes in from the cold.
O, if a man is kith or king,
Still the dogs howl.

In our cubbyhole, the dogs guard the fire,
and so as Danes or Swedes might say,
They protect their own Mother Nature.
Not a barnicle, nor yet a mother,

I have kissed him in dreams and foggy rains;
Against the coming cold dreamed of pennies or bread,
Seen the dogs bay at my doorstep
While alone I wander til waking.

[Google's translation may not be much better.]

Prompt: Anti-Bucket List

I saw a writing prompt a couple weeks ago: write an anti-bucket list. A list of things you never want to do, as opposed to a list of things you want to do before you die.

It's surprisingly hard to write a list like that. I mean, there are all the easy, predictable things, like most of us never want to kill anyone or catch a hemorrhagic fever or lose a limb. But beyond that, I can't think of many things I absolutely don't want to do (Except tuna fish. I never want to eat tuna fish. Not the real fish, but that stuff in the can. Can't go near it.) It's a lot easier for me to come up with a list of things I'm afraid I'll never do, or a list of things it's already too late for me to do.

All of which is funny, because I've often had a hard time coming up with a list of things I want to do. Just ask the last career counselor I talked to.

Urban Safari: Castle Island

One of my secret shames is how little of Boston I've ever actually visited. Today I struck out into Southie to see Castle Island (photos).

I'm not sure I've spent any more time in Southie than it takes to pass through on my way to somewhere else, which is really too bad. I saw a lot of charming neighborhoods today--well-maintained triple deckers, wide streets, plenty of sunshine. To start, I took the red line to Broadway station, then waited for the #9 bus. Directions on the DCR web site are somewhat vague about where to get off the bus, but since it says the #9 or #11 to City Point, I decided to take the bus to City Point. For those of you who don't know, I will share my discovery with you: despite being the destination of multiple bus lines, there is no there there. City Point is a smallish parking lot where the buses turn around. From there I walked back a couple of stops to where I should have gotten out to begin with.

At Broadway station, a pair of nattily dressed (straw fedoras, crisp yellow shirts) old men insisted I board the bus before them (one explained, in what I think was an Italian accent, that he did this out of 'respect' for me.) The bus was fairly crowded. Two young men standing near me were catching up. One explained that his first name is "J", just the letter J, but that the arresting cop wrote "Jay" and then they booked him under his middle name, so the warrant had the wrong name on it. He followed this up with a story about running into a mutual friend on the train, carrying a black trash bag containing 40 pounds of meat. The friend claimed to be on his way to a BBQ, to which J responded, "Why are you lying to me, man? You saw an opportunity to steal 40 lbs of meat! No one's going to buy meat from you out of a trash bag." This is the sort of local color I don't get hanging around the South End or Coolidge Corner, so already the excursion has exceeded my expectations.

How is it that I've never gone to Castle Island? It's lovely, and remarkably close to the city, and I realize now I've glimpsed it from the Expressway as I'm on my way to somewhere less interesting. Despite being in the flight path, it seemed quiet, too, in a "wow, am I really minutes away from a city bus?" kind of way. There were plenty of people around, and people watching was good. Witness the elderly woman leaning against the back of a wheelchair, pushing it along the walkway, while a Yorkie lounged in the seat. There were lots of children and older folks and dogs--it was a pleasant family outing kind of place. It actually seemed a little weird to me that there weren't packs of teenagers hanging around threatening the peace.

I stopped by Sullivan's and had a hot dog. I felt that a hot dog was required for the full Castle Island experience. I made a full circumambulation of Pleasure Bay. It was a beautiful day, the people watching was excellent, and even the stacks of cargo containers over at Conley Terminal had a certain charm. I could picture spending a couple of hours just watching the giant cranes in operation. I also saw one of the tall ships motoring past, on its way out of town, presumably. She was flying the Brazilian flag, so I guess it may have been the Cisne Branco.

On my way back, I walked down East Broadway past L Street, then picked up the #9 again, and took it into Copley. This bus stops right in front of the building where I work. It was astounding to me that South Boston was so close to the South End. Pulling into Copley Square on the bus, I had that feeling you get when you're seeing a familiar site from an entirely new vantage point.

Altogether a successful outing, and now I must plan another trip in Boston's neighborhoods.

Literary Categories

Seen today as a category label on 3 sets of book shelves in Barnes & Noble: "Teen Paranormal Romance"

Seasonal

Today I wondered if April flowers had brought May showers.

Recently Misinterpreted: Fad Diet Division

Supermarket tabloid cover: "Rihanna drops 15 pounds for Chris."

What I read: "Rihanna drops 15 pounds for Christ."

If only I were bolder

Four or five guys in the pub for lunch, reminiscing about their fraternity, where they played Dungeons & Dragons as a drinking game.

I am so turned on.