A low-riding Volvo from New Jersey to Philadelphia…

…drove to Kooser State Park in Pennsylvania on June 7…

…through Ohio to Shades State Park, Indiana on June 9…

… to a campsite off the Mississippi in Illinois on June 10 …

… then Great River Bluffs State Park in Minnesota on June 11 …

… outside of Bob’s Diner on June 12, we check in on low riding-ness …

… still low. Continue to Vermillion State Recreation Area, June 12 …

… and then see some Presidents on June 15th …

… and also Crazy Horse …

… but before all that, we got to see The House on the Rock’s Infinity Room …

… which looks like this from the outside …

… but not backwards, forwards, cross the Utah Salt Flats …

… and into Sonoma county …

But, the reason we’re here (or clicking the back button) right now is to read a list of definitions of words that I picked out of the book. There were many more I didn’t know so well, but we’ll just stick to this short list for now.

Star Chamber

A court or group marked by arbitrary, oppressive, and secretive procedures.

Locum

A person filling in for another, especially for a doctor or clergyman.

Steenth

1. Latest in an indefinitely long sequence.
2. One sixteenth.

[Alteration of the word sixteenth.]

Also, the Wordsmith included this:

Notes: The formation of the word “steenth” from “sixteenth” took place through a process called aphesis (from Greek, literally “a letting go”). Aphesis is when an unstressed sound from the beginning of a word get lost over time.

Some other examples are:
“cute” from “acute”
“’tis” from “it is”
“gypsy” from “Egyptian”, from the belief that Gypsies came from Egypt (they actually came from India).

Trichotillomania

A compulsion to pull out one’s hair.

[From Greek tricho- (hair) + tillein (to pluck, pull out) + -mania (excessive enthusiasm or craze).]

paper tiger

One who is outwardly strong and powerful but is in fact powerless and ineffectual.

I wake up in a smelly motel room. Time to talk awake, and take a walk. I start on the sidewalk.

Then I take to the road. My destination, a big statue, stands 40 feet tall in the distance.

Walk walk walk.

Stand proud, giant hobo. I wonder who would have put the fellow here.

A plaque sits on the hobo’s pedestal…

… and leaves me more confused. It reads:

Hobo Joe
Built by and
stands in memory of
Marvin Ransdale
(1928-1988)
by
his good friend
Ramon Gillum
July, 1989

Did Marvin build it in his own memory? Did Ramon build it for Marvin? Perhaps they build it together, but come July, 1989 only Ramon was around to remember Marvin’s contribution? I’m not sure.

But the hobo lives near a meat processing plant.

I begin looping back to the hotel, and meet an owl guide.

He reveals to me the mysteries of waste and tools left out by citizens of Buckeye.

Done with waste, I continue with the drive thru to the motel.

8-bit Nintendo video game music charms me still. The Nintendo could have five channels of sound, one capable of a sampled sound (thanks, Wikipedia article “Video Game Music”). This restriction lends a chamber music feel to the music that I really missed once game technology improved.

This may be a blasphemous to some, but here’s a Bach fugue with four voices for comparison. I would like to hear the Nintendo perform some Bach fugues one day.

What delights me about the game music is also presenet in chamber music. Chamber music is named as such because it could be performed in small palace chambers. Composers for the game had to cope with a technological limit while composers for the palace had to deal with a spatial limit – but for each the limit was the same. Only so many voices could be happening at the same time. I like how composers for each platform had to deal with the same limit for such different but parallel reasons.

I’m not the first to notice: here’s a video of a string quartet performing a medley of themes from The Legend of Zelda.

Today, I haven’t finished it even though I enjoyed it well enough. The book contains lots of vocabulary I didn’t know – perhaps one of the reasons why I slowed with reading. Anyway, here are some words I learned while reading.

insouciant

Definition:

casual: marked by blithe unconcern

Her Usage:

I had just rounded a corner when [the falling bird's] insouciant step caught my eye

sere

Definition:

dried-up: (used especially of vegetation) having lost all moisture

Her Usage:

I couldn’t see whether that sere rustle I heard was a distant rattlesnake, slit-eyed, or a nearby sparrow kicking in the dry flood debris slung at the foot of a willow

bivouac

Definition:

camp: temporary living quarters specially built by the army for soldiers

Her Usage:

No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest.

sonant

Definition:

a speech sound accompanied by sound from the vocal cords

surd

Definition:

a consonant produced without sound from the vocal cords

Her Usage:

The wind shrieks and hisses down the valley, sonant and surd, drying the puddles and dismantling the nests from the trees

hummock

Definition:

knoll: a small natural hill

Her Usage:

the ridges bosses and hummocks sprout bulging from its side

eidetic

Definition:

of visual imagery of almost photographic accuracy

Her Usage:

But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information, and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our own pasts

frangible

Definition (from wikipedia):

A material is said to be frangible if through deformation it tends to break up into fragments, rather than deforming plastically and retaining its cohesion as a single object

Her Usage:

because a sycamore’s primitive bark is not elastic but frangible, it sheds continously as it grows

memento mori

Definition (also wikipedia):

Latin for, “Remember you must die”

Her Usage:

That, I wanted to say as I recognized the prize she held, is memento mori for people who read too much.

susurrus

Definition:

susurration: the indistinct sound of people whispering; “a soft susurrus of conversation”

Her Usage:

I never merited this grace, that when I face upstream I scent the virgin breath of mountains, I feel a spray of mist on my cheeks and lips, I hear a ceaseless splash and susurrus, a sound of water not merely poured smoothly down air to fill a steady pool, but tumbling live about, over, under, around, between, through an intricate speckling of rock.

lambent

Definition:

softly bright or radiant

Usage:

the leaf was so thin and etiolated it was translucent, but at the same time it was lambent, minutely, with a kind of pale and sufficient light

Before I acknowledge the tinyness of myself, my travel companions, and the park, we walk the cholla cactus trail. The cholla are the first locals we encounter on our trip through Joshua Tree.

I have to mention the holiness of these plants as well. When walking through a forest, you brush up against plants all the time. But this is not the forest, and these plants demand respect.

Look but don’t touch.

Walk slowly.

We drive on, leaving behind the cholla, and getting closer to my discovery of tinyness. After more space, we come upon fields of rocks. We can walk among them.

And climb among them.

We can stand and sit on them.

It’s the rocks that make me re-remember how tiny I am.

Not only am I tiny. Everyone is tiny.

Dan is in the next one too, look close.

Dan is hypothetically in the next 2 images. (This one from the Orange County Register)

(next image from NASA’s Visible Earth)

The rocks offer me anamnesis of scale, and allow us to play on top of them. But in exchange they demand a respect very different from the cholla cactus. A respect not so different from a wet city sidewalk. We must be careful with where we place ourselves, or else our selves get stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Or between two rocks, in this case.

But we’re careful, and today no one gets stuck between any rocks or hard places.

In Los Angeles, I climb the hill on Occidental College campus. At the top I meet a stranger who tells me to take a photo of these birds because they’re a rare site. For his whole life he’s lived near the hill we stand on, so I believe him. Click for the full size, they (the birds) are tiny.

Sunrise, 2010 Feb 11

I wake up early from a dream. It’s a bit chilly, and I know I won’t fall back asleep. I decide to climb the hill again and see the sunrise. I’ve not been awake for sunrise since… late August I think. Maybe early September.

The moon is waning, nearly new. I recall the full moon very well, and I’m surprised at how half a moon cycle has nearly passed. It’s felt like so long since then, but it’s not even been two weeks.

My perception (or my perception of my perception) of time has been miscalibrated for a while now. Or rather, newly calibrated. A week passes and the state of mind I have feels like my whole life has been that state of mind. I can’t tell if I’ve achieved a better understanding of my emotions, or if I’m just terribly confused about the rate time passes.

One of things I always find appealing about travel is how it dilates time. Removing myself from my routine places and activities changes something in my brain’s understanding of time. Perhaps our perception of time is based upon how much work our brain is doing, and the brain has to do more work to process the unfamiliar. This theory goes against the character in Catch 22 who lays in a hospital bed unmoving and bored. His claim is that being bored feels like a lot of time is passing. He’s attempting to reach immortality through time dilation through boredom.

Having woken from a dream, I wonder: how do dreams fit into this understanding time and the (un)familiar?

Anyway, this is all just to say, I saw the moon nearly new.

Another pre-sunrise image. It’s interesting to compare the difference of the city after sunset and before sunrise. More lights after sunset. The horizon has a brighter orange glow. You get the sense that things are receding. Before sunrise the sounds are less and so are the sights.

On New Jersey highways, while driving 65+ MPH, the water drops run at a more horizontal angle. Not so on a stop-and-go city bus.

After the doctor’s appointment, which was a check-up, which is to say I got nothing out of it, I walk through Cadman Plaza. Bare trees abound. They catch my attention a lot these days.

On the train home later today, I’ll read the following sentence in Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

My mind branches and shoots like a tree.

I will think about how the trees catch my attention, and know that this is why.

But that will happen later. Right now I’m walking towards the train so that I can read the sentence. On Jay Street I pass by the altar for the dead dog.

The altar has been there for at least a year, probably several. It’s always made me happy because it’s an expression of love for an animal companion and because no one has been sick enough to destroy it. I also really like the objects devoted to the puppy. I wonder what stories each of them holds.

I board the train, and continue reading.

Tehanu was written many years after the original trilogy, and is a very different type of book. Where the other books tell of adventures, Tehanu is much more reflective and conversational on the world the characters inhabit. Still fantastic, but fantastic in the way that the real world is already fantastic.

The world of Earthsea is infused with the power of words; it’s appropriate that while reading I recorded words that I didn’t know how to use well. (For example, I understand the word “ire”, but wouldn’t use it myself because I know there was more of an implication than just “anger”.) Below are the words and definitions, mostly as a reference for myself, but maybe you’d like one as well.

Definitions from Princeton Wordnet (I think)

ire

anger: a strong emotion; a feeling that is oriented toward some real or supposed grievance
wrath: belligerence aroused by a real or supposed wrong (personified as one of the deadly sins)

Usage: “the witch accepted her due with unending ire”

wheedle

influence or urge by gentle urging, caressing, or flattering

usage: “a wheedling kindness”

gnomic

relating to or containing gnomes

This definition is a little disappointing. I thought it would be more explicitly about the earth rather than just about gnomes.

sagacity

the mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations

exigency

a pressing or urgent situation

Usage: “the indifference of a man towards the exigencies that rule a woman”

larder

a supply of food especially for a household

Usage: “living off his larder”

calumny

noun: a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone’s words or actions

Usage: “casting calumny and lies”

candor

fairness: ability to make judgments free from discrimination or dishonesty

rebuke

an act or expression of criticism and censure

auspice

a favorable omen

Usage: “and it sounds as if all auspices and events were fortunate”

diffident

showing modest reserve

Usage: “he said it in a diffident way”