Today 21 March is International Poetry Day.
So here's one of my favorite poems. I often think about it. Its author is Issa and the date it was written is March 1818.
A pheasant calls out
As someone blind
Crawls across the bridge.
Credit
Haiku adapted from Chris Drake's translation.
A movie cliche.
The wind takes the calendar leaves.
We still cry though.
Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks has let it be known that he is dying.
For many years he has been an inspiration to me, ever since I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat.
His writing combines relentless scientific curiosity with a deep empathy towards the patients he comes into contact with. This has earned him a world-wide correspondence and the many case histories people have sent him over the years make his books fascinating almost beyond belief.
In the final chapter of The Mind's Eye, he gives a courageous personal account of suffering from a retinal tumor. At the time it was successfully removed. Unfortunately it must have left behind a trace which has since spread.
Watching lights in the millpond.
My hands frozen to the rail.
No movement.
Blown off in autumn.
Missed in winter snow.
Blossom. No need now.
Recently the Belgian Artist Frederik De Wilde exhibited a square blacker than any human being has ever seen before. Blackboards look black to us but actually reflect as much as 10% of the light falling on them. De Wilde's black square reflects 0.01% - one thousand times less.
There is an impressive image here. New Scientist magazine have described it as an attempt to paint nothing.
The work is a reflection of the celebrated Black Square that the Russian Malevich showed in St Petersburg in 1915. The image above is an image of Malevich's work that I found in Wikimedia Commons. This painting had huge influence at the time and I believe at the end of his life the artist had it hanging in his bedroom. Today it is in a fragile state (with the black foreground crazing to reveal the white below), and in another echo from the past De Wilde's NanoBlck-Sqr #1, which uses carbon nanotubes on a white frame, is so delicate that you are only permitted to view it under supervision.
But neither Malevich nor De Wilde have captured what nothing looks like. The blind have a better understanding, which you can share. What do you see round the back of your head? You've no eyes there, so you just saw (or didn't) nothing. And it's not a bit like black.
This might seem trivial or frivolous, but it's not at all. I have a big blind spot (nearly half my vision) and people ask me frequently what I see there. They expect it must be a black patch. But it's not: it's nothing. That's very hard to explain. And impossible to paint. It wouldn't be an empty canvas, a sort of visual equivalent of John Cage's composition 4'33''. And it wouldn't be a black square. It would have to not exist.
One of the verse forms I most admire is the sonnet, and another is the haiku. There are many differences but both display a classic structure and an economy of expression.
A favorite sonnet of mine is Shakespeare 73.
Everything else being equal, will you be warmest
a) Sleeping on the floor?
b) Sleeping on a mattress on the floor?
c) Sleeping on a mattress on a bed?
I've tried all three. I think most will agree b) beats a). But what about c) versus b)?
I felt warmer, and explained this by the air between the bottom of the mattress and the floor being a thermal layer.
However a friend disagrees (strongly). In their view the air gap between mattress and floor makes no difference. Any warmth that percolates down from my body to the air layer below will simply flow out the sides, and so only the mattress sits between me and the temperature of the floor.
Who is right in this heated debate? Can anyone comment?
Life, A User's Manual, by Georges Perec
I've often heard of this book but never read it. Glad I didn't before, because it means more to me now.
Two thirds to go, but summarized
A Parisian apartment block appears as a doll's house, but with the lives of inhabitants minutely described (unlike a real doll's house).
At the same time it's a chessboard, perched on a jigsaw puzzle.
The moving part is the lives described and the sympathy shown.
I was surprised by all this. I'd really like to know how other people react to the book. Please write in.
Before reading this I never thought about how human populations, like trees, carry evidence about past weather events.
In a bad year trees add narrower tree rings. Children grow less.
The impact of the 97/98 El Nino storms on rural populations in Chile caused people to grow up nearly a hand's width shorter than otherwise expected. That's a lot.
... where I write about visual perception and matters to do with disability and my personal experience of it.
If you are interested you can visit partialinsight.wordpress.com
Ducks were skidding
On a frozen lake.
Where a fox thought it would catch them.
You knew I was lying.
Cried the liveforeverbird.
You knew. You knew.
In summer the old man puts up a brave face.
Easier in winter.
... is about vision and what it's like to lose part of it:
Wading through tiny mist
Suddenly it's autumn
Yesterday summer.
It's winter now
Our warm feeling for war
Dismays me more than ever.
Why was I brought into existence cries the philosopher.
The grasshopper does not answer.
It's easy now
Living with a bunch of ghosts
Except when it rains.
Not that much to say really. Just that having a stroke decided me to volunteer for the Stroke Association. I think it's an impressive organisation.
Old man
Why do you still keep the big plates for the winter feast?
Time.
If you find your way here stranger, I have become visually impaired and now blog about my experiences at
http://partialinsight.wordpress.com/
I hope you may like to follow me there.
After the rain
The stickleback
Came back up the stream again
And the hedgehog to the lane.
Spring rain,
And a frog on the path.
Tread carefully old man.
I dislike the booted
gardener crushing snails.
But applaud the thrush.
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