Hilton Head Island: Category Five; obsolete; finished (for now); some poems

 

Each morning I check the Earth Wind Map 

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=132.13,-30.00,1002

and this morning I found the above.  That is a cyclone which I have learned has been given the name Narelle.  You probably know what I think about giving storms names, but that is a rather attractive one.  The storm itself is expected to be making landfall about now as a Category 5 near Cape Melville in far northern Queensland.  I know that coast better than most, having sailed it four times in four different boats.  There are very few people up there, which is one of the reasons I like it.  I hope they survive.

I have become obsolete, if I was’t always.

I saw my demise in the above chart from the WASHINGTON POST yesterday.  Writers and authors are a very small dot on the extreme right.

Another reason not to want to be young now.

Ah, well, it was good while it lasted.

I have just finished the second rewrite of GANNET 6.  I may go over it again sometime, but not immediately.

Immediately I have to sort out formatting.  I write on my 11” iPad Pro with attached Apple keyboard case using Apple’s Pages app.  Unfortunately Pages for IOS does not export perfectly to anything, including my MacBook Air.  So I have a lot of clerical work to do.  I expect this is a task that AI could do quite quickly, but learning how to use AI to perform that task seems more complicated than just doing it myself, and since I am now obsolete, I have the time.

I have been asked what I will do with the book when it is publishable.  

All my publishers, editors and agents have either retired or died.  That happens when you get to be 84.  I have sent out four queries.  One to a publisher.  Three to agents.  I will wait awhile to see if I get any replies.  This is like being twenty again and unpublished, when I am old and very published.  I am curious to see what happens, but I will not wait long.

I think the book in its present form is not publishable except as an e-book.  There are too many charts and photographs for it to be profitable in paper.  I am willing to make some compromises, but, while I am a writer/obsolete, I think the reader’s experience of the voyage is much enhanced by the images.  So most likely I will publish it in a Kindle edition myself.  If so, I will price it modestly and donate all the vast royalties to charity.  I wrote the book for the same reason I made the voyage:  because it is what I do.  Not for money, which of course makes it a very suspicious activity in our society.

Some poems.

A few of you may remember that I have posted this one before.  I just came across it again in JAPANESE DEATH POEMS.

You may have read this in an English Literature class.

An excerpt from Lord Byron’s DON JUAN of particular interest to me.

And from Edward FitzGerald’s translation of THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM.

Hilton Head Island: frozen not chopped; leaves

 

On Monday I biked five miles to my regular six month skin cancer appointment.  The marsh is having a period of perfect weather and the ride mostly along bike trails through woods was a pleasure in 64F/18C going and a bit more on my return.  I have seen enough skin cancers to know when I have one and I didn’t think I did this time.  The doctor confirmed that I didn’t and only froze a few spots on my face.  I am now good for another six months.  Maybe.

As you can see from the photo leaves are falling.  I am having to sweep our deck almost daily.  Above is two day’s collection.  Most of the trees on the island remain green year round, though a bit duller in winter than summer, and this is spring, not fall.  So I googled and AI informs me:  Live oaks (Quercus virginiana) shed their old leaves in early spring as part of a natural ‘molting process’ to make way for new, fresh growth and blooming.  Although considered evergreens, they do not hold leaves forever; instead they replace last year’s foliage simultaneously, allowing them to remain green year-round.

Thank you AI.

This is also the start of pollen season so what is not knee deep in oak leaves is covered with yellow dust.

Still it is paradise.

Now I have to go sweep.

Hilton Head Island: martini with heron; and three poems

 

Some people have their martinis with olives or a bit of lemon peel, the last few evenings we have had ours with a Great Blue Heron who sits on a limb of one of the Live Oaks just beyond our deck and porch, preening himself and contemplating the meaning of life or perhaps the presence of fish in Skull Creek.  In the above photo, which really does not fully portray the beauty of the evening, he is hidden behind the corner porch column.

The marsh has been perfect in all but one respect for several days and is forecast to continue to be.  The one lack has been wind.  3 knots today.  2-7 knots forecast for tomorrow.  3-7 Saturday.  And that is at the airport which is more exposed than Skull Creek.  I would like to take a break from writing and go sailing.  I will know better when that might happen after being seen by the skin cancer doctor for my six month visit Monday morning.  It would be nice if I need only to be frozen and not chopped.

From William Blake, 1757-1827.

And two Japanese death poems.

This from Raizan who died in 1716 at the age of 63 I know I have posted here before.

  

Hilton Head Island: prescient

Sixty-five years ago a brilliant nineteen year old college sophomore wrote a paper with the deliberately provocative title, ‘The Peasant Class”, in which he postulated that during the history of the mis-named Homo Sapiens species the vast majority of its members had provided muscle power and a gene pool and that neither was any longer needed. This was long before genetic engineering, robots, drones, or AI.

Perhaps a few others had reached a similar conclusion, but he had figured this out for himself, as he had that we are Home Insipiens, not Homo Sapiens, and as he grew older perhaps Homo Narcissus.  For more than a thousand years we thought we were the center of the universe.  

He had a rarely original intelligence as well as time would reveal a rare body and will.  

All gifts.

How can one take pride in gifts, but most of us do.  He tried not to, but sometimes gave himself credit for persevering on his own, which was probably a gift too.

He got an A on the paper. 

If you read the news you know that the present has caught up with his hypothesis.

Here is a recent example

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/

That prescient student has unexpectedly survived a life of calculated risk and is now an old man.  He does not know how this will play out, but he does not see a pleasant outcome.