Bluetyger – William J. Gibson's Notebook
eclectic, whimsical, not terribly serious
Realized a serious gap in my reading. Nothing by Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing. So I looked for The Golden Notebook at my local library. No luck. Bought a copy. Just started it. I am inside the introduction written in 1971, (published oriignally in 1962), and finding myself agreeing with everything she says. Pressing onwards.
We ate sushi.
I was brave about it.
She orderd.
I paid.
We talked about everything
And nothing connected us anymore.
Nothing cooked.
The only heat
Escaped like the sand
Of the desert at night.
The suddeness of it
Taking you to winter.
Knowing the sun will rise
And bring summer. And all of that
Just a lie. An agreement to convert
The temperature to a new polite scale.
We do that, don’t we
But that was gone.
Everything was gone.
I kept my unbroken chopsticks
For some reason.
And she helped me on with my coat
We were charting new territory
Ready for another expedition.
this was written back in 2000, it is interesting how one phrase has assumed a new and specific meaning…..perhaps now not a very keepable extended metaphor type poem
One
Conversations get edited
As we explore the old Soviet reinvention of history
It was just a simple love affair.
Of course they are never simple
Once they turn from magic to some other element
Of the periodic table
We make bombs
And throw them at each other.
Some have the little red flag that say “BOOM”
Others pack real shrapnel, verbally delivered
At ground zero
I should know better by now
So should you.
Doesn’t anybody ever grow up?
And everyone is right
And everything is adjusted and reshuffled
And the airbrush paints us both out of the review
Of the May day parade at the Kremlin.
I can still hear the jets
I can smell the exhaust of the tanks
And the rocket transports
The smile that was in your eyes
When you looked at me.
lining up the field hockey net’s crossbar
because there are no uprights
he kicks the field goal
from 45 yards
(he has paced them off)
he hits eight out of ten
he uses no tee
he has no holder
he is kicking without benefit of team or spectators
first he kicks back with his heel
gouging a suitable depression
in the burned out turf
of the park’s playing field
he stoops and places the football
gently so that it will remain upright
steps back
then launches it
with all the unreleased
energy of his calf and his thigh and his back
(from the chapbook “Change-Up – Poems and Stories” by W. J. Gibson, 1984)
I am breathing life into an old pc that used to run Windows XP Home. I am liking Linux a lot. Earlier this year I acquired an new HP pc with Vista Home premium. I have been experiencing problems with the downloading of jpg. files from several compact flash cards. It seems to be a
Vista problem. I have checked the compact flash cards by using an old Verbatim card reader connected to an iBook (2001 vintage) and the images came across flawlessly. I then attached the Verbatim card reader to the HP pc and experienced image problems. Some images appeared with a shift as if they had been cut in half and the two pieces were slight offset like they had been placed slightly off alignment. Others had one quarter to one half of the colours drained to a single colour, sometimes blue, sometimes green. When I attempted a second download of the same images from the card, those images that came in shifted now came in correctly and some that had come in correctly the first time now came in shifted.I tried two different cameras and had download problems with both.
Back to ubuntu…Set up of the OS and getting applications and updating them all work really well.
I just reconnected an old scanner, Epson Perfection 2450, and it was effortless. I just need to get used to GIMP again. I am a little rusty.
