litlog 2014++

[Senna Jawa]

Happy New Year (almost),

it's time to start a new PF&D Literotica blog. Let me call it

litlog 2014++​

Everybody is welcome to post here.

Senna Jawa​

 

[Senna Jawa]

Remember the old one?

I started my old Lit blog, meant to be open for everybody, on 2006-01-30. The last post was by butters, on 2010-03-07. She asked me a question there but somehow that was the end of this whole story (shame on me).

A bit earlier there was a revolution at PF&D, and my blog died as colatteral damage - instead, a new blog was founded by others, and was active for a while.

But it was the Lit blog which featured superb stories by Wicked Eve, delightful.

Senna Jawa​

 

[Senna Jawa]

False start

Let's say that someone in the US bought a new American car in the middle of year--say--1979. It would be considered a 1980 car. Is it like this these days too (in the US)?

The same here. It's still 2013 but my blog is already called _ 2014.

Senna Jawa​

 

[twelveoone]

A bit earlier there was a revolution at PF&D, and my blog died as colatteral damage - a new blog was funded and was active for a while.

really, with barricades thrown up and/or torn down? who won?
with this start you are putting in extraneous information that provokes an inquiry So who won? Reds or Whites? A pox on them both - Soyuz Trudovogo Krestyanstva - I digress.

Well, today I left a bunch of comments that contained no information as a protest against Slackers Inc., so it seems it hasn't changed much, sorry I missed the revolt.

 

[Angeline]

Happy New Year SJ.

Those Eve stories were the best. I'm still convinced she is the funniest woman on the planet.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Ann Arbor

I came to Ann Arbor for the first time 44 and a half years ago. It is my fourth time here. It's a very nice town. I am not fond of it anyway. But it's ok.

When I lived in the Southern states then I was glad to avoid winter. But when I am in Michigan I like winter and snow all the same.

A blog entry: my neighbor was murdered a month ago. I knew him very little. I still thought about him a few times, was missing him. When I learned first time still without any details that there were some arrests made, I guessed what happened, and the background too (it was not difficult). There was a man, and there is no man no more.

Two poetry Nobel prize winners were somewhat related to Ann Arbor. I met them both, marginally--and I didn't mention my poetry to them, I didn't feel like doing it. The occasions were political.

I like trivia. And the world is somewhat democratic. Thus, without striving at it, I met a number of famous people from different domains. It's interesting, nice, even if I actually had somewhat a tendency to avoid them. Sometimes it's nice, sometimes awkward, occasionally a bit frustrating or negative. Just life. Oh, well...

My thinking is well balanced, half--positively, half--negatively. Maybe it's balanced too well. Suddenly I remembered an occasion here in Ann Arbor, in 1999, when I lived in Ypsi (next to Ann Arbor), could meet in person and socialize with a "flower" of Polish politicians and similar. Most everybody was there, including the President of Poland, and my old friends (recognized politicians at the time, but youngsters to me when they were young dissidents), ... I even paid a bit for attending the ceremonies, for myself (and for another person)... But--during all these days--I didn't go, not a single time. A typical non-story for me.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Thinking about doing something useful. Just thinking. No harm.

About 1am I saw that I had nothing better to do but to go to bed. It'd feel too sad to me. Thus about 2-2:30am I got myself a beer (the exact timing of every- and anything seems very important to a blog ). And I wrote an email to a friend of mine. About a simple idea which I had for years, nothing really original. I want to write a bunch of programs which would analyze prose and poems. Then my friend would use my programs. I'd try to use them too but I can't do much. Perhaps we--here at PF&D--could discuss it with some of you (or not, who knows). Even unix program wc could be a start. But I would do quite a bit more. I could use, in my case, perl and its regular expression.

Most everything has deserted me but a few ideas. We could say in Polish: a flower on a winter coat. Or is it an international saying?

 

[Desejo]

I am perplexed by reading lists with titles like "the 100 read-before-you-die books", or "books that will change your life". The summer reading lists for my English class in High School were better conceived.

Yet something compels me to beat them. And so every year I try, again, to read something I know I have been avoiding for years. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised, but this year I attacked Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. An American "classic".

Suffice it to say that Ms. Rand now ranks among those I would never invite to the mythical "pick ten guests, living or dead" dinner party. What an insufferable bore she must have been.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Book titles offensive to readers

I am perplexed by reading lists with titles like "the 100 read-before-you-die books", or "books that will change your life". [...] this year I attacked Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. An American "classic".

Suffice it to say that Ms. Rand now ranks among those I would never invite to the mythical "pick ten guests, living or dead" dinner party. What an insufferable bore she must have been.

I never buy nor read any book titled like "HTML for dummies" or "An idiot's guide to C++" or similar. I don't touch them. Never.

 

[HarryHill]

I never buy nor read any book titled like "HTML for dummies" or "An idiot's guide to C++" or similar. I don't touch them. Never.

I have the first, was a revelation reading it so many years since publication.
It did lead to other things. The latter looks like wolfbane never liked c++

 

[Senna Jawa]

Dilemma

We have the butters' New Year resolutions thread. I promised to go out at least five times a weak, and be outdoors at least 40 minutes each time. January 1--I didn't go anywhere. January 2--ditto. January 3--it's after 10:30pm, and I decided that I have to go, it's my last chance.

winter walk
i talk on my cell
snow squeek

wh,
2014-01-3/4​

Indeed, I left about 10:50pm, was on my phone at 10:55pm. It was my good friend. I believe that it was the very first time that we ever had a phone conversation (and we have never met so far). We talked till something like 11:35pm. I don't know how to get the length of the conversation from my phone. I still kept walking. Then I stopped at a coffee & pastry place (something like this) but I had just medium cappuccino. There were very few places opened at this time but this one was. Strange. Downtown. A major university campus. And most of the places, like a local Starbucks, were closed. A minute or so after coffee, on a street, it was already 00:07am. I kept walking. Got home back at 1:05am. I did walk 40+ minutes each day: January 3 and January 4.

Now, should I count my January 03/04 walk as one or as two?

Regular drinking coffee is relatively new to me. I visited several different coffee places in Ann Arbor during the last 18 months or so. Including five different Starbucks. They have a so-called plan for regular customers. At one time I had an idea how to take advantage of it. But no more. I asked employees once or twice but got no meaningful answer. I have stopped being a regular there or elsewhere already though.

 

[Desejo]

I used to take walks like that in college. I love the snow and cold. Evening walks in the winter have a special kind of silence that makes one very aware of the strangeness of being alive. If that makes any sense.

 

[Senna Jawa]

I used to take walks like that in college. I love the snow and cold. Evening walks in the winter have a special kind of silence that makes one very aware of the strangeness of being alive. If that makes any sense.

I went for my next midnight walk. This time over three hours.

no more words--
the feel of steps
in soft snow

wh,
2014-01-04​

​

Why would the Saturday-Sunday night be more busy than the Friday-Saturday night around the main UofM campus? Not too busy anyway. I saw a beggar approaching some other youngsters in the corner of my eye. A moment later a beggar approached me frontally. The young guy was well dressed, had a face like a moon. I made a no-gesture without a word. For a while it had spoiled my mood. The Ann Arbor beggars are tiring. In general I understand the truly poor guys, while the phony beggars (not poor) are ugly parasites.

Soon I went to the same coffee place as yesterday. The woman remembered me, and that I ordered a medium cappuccino.

I saw two snow-trucks cleaning the street. The small vehicle was pushing the snow toward the big one with its small spoon(?) until it would deposit the snow on the larger spoon of the bigger truck.

 

[butters]

love the idea of your night walks in the snow, senna - and most can bring their own experience of snow being compressed underfoot to add to the words.

spoon - that image made me smile

 

[Senna Jawa]

spoon - that image made me smile

You're naughty!

Senna Jawa​

 

[butters]

You're naughty!

Senna Jawa​

i am? awesome



blog 2014: it's been a strange day. a mixture of housework, poetry, having to turf people out of my house, more poetry/chitchat, Harry, Sherlock, and now blogging.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Siergiej Jesienin (Sergei Esenin?)

I've written a haiku in Polish about Russian poet Siergej Jesienin. His name sounds like jesień (autumn). Before he killed himself he wrote a beautiful cycle of winter poems. Let me call him Autumnish.

autumn--autumnish
russian winter
spring around the corner​

wh,
2014-01-05​

In the past couple of weeks I do next to nothing, and mainly that next to... consists recently of contributing to a Polish haiku portal. Oh, well... wellllllll...

 

[Senna Jawa]

Nose and the cell phone

The temperature during my Fri/Sat midnight walk was +21F. During Sat/Sun it was +30F. Today (Mon), when I left just before 9:10pm, the temperature was -6F (minus six). And the same when I came back home at 11:10pm. Actually, all this time the temperature was lower. Until now, I was reading the measurements just outside my apt building. But Internet was showing -14F (minus fourteen) all this time. During the walk I was checking sometimes my lips, cheek bones and nose. Just in case. They were fine. Only my cell phone froze in the mid of a conversation, bang! It came back to life later at home.

winter -
my nose likes it
my cell phone hates it​

wh,
2014-01-06​

 

[Senna Jawa]

...and there were mirrors too

I imagined, and still do, a tall ballroom, music, noise. People dancing, having conversations, sitting, standing, moving in circles, ... And I am a fly attached upside down at the ceiling.

ballroom mirrors
hundreds of fly's eye lenses​

wh,
2014-01-06​

I myself as me am boring but I befriended people at the each end of more than one coordinate axis:

• outstanding chess players and hopeless patzers;
• on one hand businessmen and millionaires, and on the other hand the topless dancers, bums, and even criminals;
• great artists and scientists; but also dummies...

No, I have never befriended any dummy. If I was a friend with someone then it was impossible for me to perceive them as a dummy--pure psychology. Now I start thinking about myself, and this would lead me too far away. Brrr... But sometimes when I am not stupid then I am that fly upside down.

the free spirit
of a fly
in a prison​

wh,
2014-01-07​

 

[Desejo]

I have a few friends who have become friends due to circumstance, not natural affinity. For whatever reasons, my standards are not the same for them as for others. I find myself skating around issues that I know will lead into the murky waters of why, under normal circumstances, I would not like them.

Like racist beliefs that they don't even realize are racist, for example.

The situation bothers me, but instead of confrontation I opt to simply box that category of friends into "exceptions". I am not sure why.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Snowy winter

It's easy to write haiku when you're at home. Now I walk most of the (mid)nigths. I even carry a small calendar (as I've advised others--it's a classical suggestion which I have learned from an instructor). It's still difficult:

snow ides haiku -
interpret them!​

wh,
2014-01-09/10​

 

[Senna Jawa]

I have a few friends who have become friends due to circumstance, not natural affinity. For whatever reasons, my standards are not the same for them as for others. I find myself skating around issues that I know will lead into the murky waters of why, under normal circumstances, I would not like them.

Like racist beliefs that they don't even realize are racist, for example.

The situation bothers me, but instead of confrontation I opt to simply box that category of friends into "exceptions". I am not sure why.

This is a very difficult situation. Many of us know it or its variations. I call them difficult friendships. Sometimes they are still true friendships, and sometimes you wonder, as in the case of prejudiced types. Sometimes they call me friend (and other names ), and I don't reciprocate, and they don't seem to pay attention to it.

On a few occasions, and I am not prejudiced! , people break up with me. Most of the time it comes as a surprise. Some of these friends I don't care much for them, but in one case he was a very wise person. We knew each other through Internet and soon also over the phone. He proclaimed our friendship, then broke it three times. After the first break-up I wrote a poem, szekspiriada (Szekspir = Shakespeare hence szekspiriada is like a Shakespeare story). It was in Polish but otherwise an English (Shakespeare) sonnet, and the friendship topic was Shakespearian. I never saw any earlier English sonnet in Polish (perhaps there were some translated sonnets kept in English style, but I still didn't see them). I asked people and never got a clear answer. Later yes, some English sonnets later than mine did show up.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Collateral damage

At one time I was young. Really, ages ago but I was. In those days I concentrated on the precision of a description of whatever issue under a discussion. Often people would oppose me because some words or phrases sounded harsh, possibly offensive. I tried to explain that I didn't care about the unrelated associations, that I was exclusively preoccupied with the issue at hand, and please focus on the purely logical context, without paying attention to anything else.

It's impossible, and I was wrong. One MUST be responsible not just for the pure logic of the topic at hand but also for the emotional side effects. One should even pay attention to what I call provocations in poetry. Such provocations are phrases which cause a strong reaction even when completely illogical. One should avoid a collateral damage.

One has to add the other dimension than just logic. One should be alert to the global, overall sound of what one says. We need to be careful--sensitive. It's impossible to hear even the most perfect logic when it is served in an awkward way or worse.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Collateral Damage

This rings so true to me, Senna. A number of years ago I wrote a ballad about the AIDS epidemic affecting a local family. In June 1990, the father committed suicide. Later in the summer the mother died from AIDS complications, and then in October, the 2 year old daughter, Angie, died. There was one surviving family member, another daughter, Niki, then 5 years old.

I suggested the father was an intravenous drug user. I based that on a conversation with someone who lived in the same Vermont town as the Folsom family. Trouble was it wasn't true. In fact, the father ran a successful business, and the mother contracted the disease through a blood transfusion prior to some surgery earlier.

I was contacted a little more than a year ago by Niki through her friend after they both read the poem on Literotica. It was a respectful e-mail, but Niki wanted to know how I arrived at my conclusion her father was a drug addict. Keeping in mind, 1990 was before most of us had easy access to the Internet. Before responding, I did a Google search and discovered quite a different narrative that included media interviews the wife gave before she died.

I apologized profusely. It was perhaps the most important lesson I've learned as a poet.

 

[Senna Jawa]

A number of years ago I wrote a ballad [...] I did a Google search and discovered quite a different narrative [...]

When I was in my teens, a friend of mine painted me, and her nude portrait (of me) hanged in a shop window of an art gallery on a main Warsaw walkway (Nowy Świat). However, with a few professional brush moves she changed my face features so that no one would recognize me. I guess GM should use a similar technique applied to writing.

The cases of a deviation from the reality, described in the two of our previous posts, are complementary. GM accidentally wrote a story which differed from the intended one. In my case, I would present reality exactly but only in the logical sense, while the tone of my words was misleading.

Regards,