Earth from home
An equirectangular projection of the globe, but this time centered on my hometown of Johannesburg* instead of the normal +0 +0. Countries are random colors.
An equirectangular projection of the globe, but this time centered on my hometown of Johannesburg* instead of the normal +0 +0. Countries are random colors.
These days I have graphs on the brain.
Nodes are countries, edges are borders, and the legends are self explanatory.
Programming time was about half the duration of Inception.
That is all.
A few days ago I had an argument with my friend and colleague Mike Sollami about poems and how to write them. We have pretty different ways of approaching it.
He takes great pleasure in the construction of his poems, and they are very clever, and also meticulously trimmed and fitted. But for various reasons I don't approve of poems that I've written this way. Mine turn out, invariably, to be grandiloquent.
So since about two years ago, I've taken a different tack. Now, when I do write poetry -- which is very rarely, and when I feel like I need to get something out of my system -- I try to unstopper my normal filters and just write, with no attempt at all to make sense.
Says Karl Pilkington, that unwitting, spherical beacon of wisdom: "I find that if you just talk, your mouth comes up with stuff". Spot on Karl. But unlike Karl, when things become too incoherent, I pull back and regroup my thoughts -- the narrative equivalent of that tripping sensation that startles you awake when you're on the border of a dream.
So here is one of those stream-of-consciousness poems, for all 2000 of you mysterious strangers who for some reason occasionally read my blog. Or maybe it's just a stalker pressing ↺ again and again.
Soaked through in all that human stuff,
marinated between your ribs.
Tickling to prepare the meat for eating,
the sun spilling out in smashed eggs.
Something rustling in the bushes:
It's the start of our game;
the first spear thrown;
a rock dropped in a pond,
sinking as it forgets.
It's concrete digesting in a slack grey pool;
crescendos of foil, fluxing and mirroring on too many scales;
nails cracking open... forgotten ages of wood.
It's an unbearable weight of dead tissue
whispering beneath vellum.
Dull metal and proud edges and a sandy transparent flux,
all that precious order sucked clean.
Boxes, stacks and arches,
between them holes and spaces
feeling the patter of feet like endless waves on a beach,
Rotted of use, they are now dead,
they are sheltering skeletons
licked by shadows that roll under
and over
and through all angles...
But also they are steeped in our breath;
they remember all passage.
They are immune.
Like regenerating coral they are safe
in our crooked reef.
If you have anything to say about what poetry means to you, if and how you write poetry, or even just whether you find this particular poem boring, witty, lazy, incomprehensible, evocative or even, gasp, pretentious, please say so in the comments.
