July, 2026

Jul 1

A rule I must never forget as an editor: It could always be better, and it must get done.

Regular felt goofy until I learned to lean correctly.

[[A Frictionless Forest]]

Skin is matter–space liaison delimiting person from place no matter species or race. My relationship to environment became my skin’s condition: a murky moat-canal failing to exclude and expel the correct bodies from mine. The itch, I scratched—blaming it for mind’s condition, until I came to know that I had failed my sacred membrane.

Prologue to [[To Itch But Not to Scratch]]?

Jul 3

Keywords for Beneath the Glacier, Ingram metadata:

Iceland; Nature; introspection; meditation; philosophy; adventure; backpacking; hiking; through-hiking; thru-hiking; camping; solitude; literary; travel; travel memoir; memoir; tourism; solo travel; gift for hiker; gift for hikers; walking; slow travel; wonder; practical philosophy; spiritual but not religious; glacier; volcano; duality; Taoism; Buddhism; mindfulness; landscape; nature philosophy; self-reliance; ethics; existentialism

And the BISAC categories:

• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
• TRAVEL / Europe / Nordic & Scandinavian Countries / Iceland & Greenland
• PHILOSOPHY / Nature

Jul 4

Notes from First Time at Carowinds (Six Flags of SC/NC)

• Mom wants to ride Flying Cobras with husband, so she leaves her 6-year-old daughter outside the gate, who is too short to ride, and asks the teenage attendant to attend to her first-born—hands her an oversized iPhone for comfort
• Black man in Pippin Jersey is the only one in the arcade playing the mini-hoop basketball game
• Great band-in-residence: Adrian Blanks and the Oracle, first impression: cover of “Funnel of Love” (60s)
• Met Roller-Coaster Junkie Josh (and his three fellow regulars, including @AirtimeAndrew); Josh has clocked 78 rides TODAY
• The most American part of the day, on The Fourth of July, was being stuck in the parking lot for an hour and a half after the park closed, during the mass exit post fireworks

Jul 6

More material for [[A Frictionless Forest]]:

When my feet or crooked or the pedals are under my arches, I press one pedal down, lift the opposite toe, then replant and repeat, righting my feet.

One of the first tips my neighbors gave me was that it was like riding a horse, but I don’t have enough experience riding horses for that comparison to be helpful. I’ve never ridden a horse at these speeds. Although, now that I have learned how to MTB, I’m sure galloping on a horse would be easier. I would know how to squeeze its ribs with my thighs, how to lean my shoulders one way and my hips the other, how to tug at the reins and say “Woah!” I understand the comparison in so far as the bike feels like a different creature, one I have mounted and am riding. But the analogy breaks down there; this creature is not as foreign as a horse. It’s bipedal, like me. Unlike with the horse, my relationship with the bike is interdependent, even co-dependent to the point of being unhealthy: without me turning the wheels, the bike would topple over; and without the seat and wheels and handlebars beneath me, I would have no means of moving through trees at such a speed. The bike is a tool we have made to feel like a creature, whereas the horse is creature we have broken enough to use as a tool. The horse is gracious enough to permit a rider and would gallop without me just the same, whereas I am the bike’s only source of vitality, its prime and sole means of motion.

Liaison is a word I tend to spell so badly that spell-check can’t even recognize it. I need to remember that it has no ‘e’. It’s not liesan, as I have tried to spell it in the past, including today. The “i-a-i” bit is tricky. But that’s the ticket to remembering the spelling.

Here’s a pneumonic that might work the same way Ace Ventura’s (Jim Carrey’s) “B-E-A-utiful” ha always worked for me:

Li-A-I-son.

For some reason, the dead leaves in the forests near Charlotte hang around, continue to coat the ground even well into summer. I thought it was odd in March to hear such a crunch as one would in late November in most American towns. But now it’s June and the ground is still laden with last year’s fallen fronds. My hypothesis: The harsh clay-soil, while nutrient-rich enough to support tall pines is not soft or accommodating enough for the humble stuff that would usually thrive in the understory, so there aren’t enough ground-plants to recycle the biomass of last year’s leaves. Thus, they persist. Squirrels trample them in a flurry of crunch-ees, even as late as July.

Jul 8

Purple prose is not simply fancy-sounding language but language chosen to sound fancy rather than to economically and entertainingly convey meaning. My favorite sentences would be purple prose if that combination of words did not also happen to be the most surprising and interesting and memorable way to communicate that particular unit of meaning.

There is no inherent meaning in anything, yet meaning abounds. From whence does it come? Why, from within you and me.

I don’t want to write travel articles; I want to write adventure essays.

“From whence” is redundant but accepted for poetic effect, as in the KJV and Shakespeare. Whence already means “from where.”

I wish every newsletter I subscribed to were a monthly column. The weekly cadence may work for podcasts and TV shows (which are spontaneously created or short-run releases, respectively) but it doesn’t work for long-form essays. An essay requires both incubation and iteration; any essay I’ve ever remembered or loved took more than a week to write, I know. Also, the sheer number of newsletter issues that land in my inbox leads me to read fewer or none at all. If there were, instead, 30 scattered over a month, maybe I would read one per day (the total volume); but receiving 80 per month, I don’t even want to spend the time deciding which issues to read within each of my subscriptions. So, I read less overall. Lastly, I’d rather not unsubscribe, because there’s great writing in the publications I subscribe to—just more like 10 great essays per year rather than 50. Don’t give me the goods. Give me the greats, only.

Jul 10

John 2:1–12 (ESV): At a wedding in Galilee, at the suggestion of his mother, Jesus transmutes thirty gallons of water into wine. Yes, that would be a miracle of chemistry and physics, but why is wine more divine than water, or why is it the first miracle in the gospel, or why does God do what his mother tells him, or why does Mary ask him to use his miraculous powers to pacify the people who drank up all the wine before the party was through? As a lifelong sober person, I am biased, of course, but even if I stick to the facts, wine seems much less desirable for the health and wellbeing, both spiritually and physically, of any group of people. At the request of his mother, to please the bride–groom and their guests, Jesus transmuted thirty gallons of clean drinking water into open “jars” of wine that, for not being sealed and corked like wine would normally be, must have been consumed that very evening in their entirety, lest the many gallons of miracle-wine spoil.

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested good glory. And the disciples believed in him (11).

This is my first time reading the actual account of this miracle in context (ESV). I always find “Jesus turned water into wine” an odd way to prove divinity, and within the context, it is even more strange: Jesus-as-court-jester.

At night, from a plane, the shape of a car is a cone: head-light, from bright to dim, narrow to wide, which cone is somehow mounted on a metal hilt, which hilt is either silver or iron or obsidian or ruby, all bejeweled: garnets on the light sabers’ butts.

(From the window-seat flying CLT–EWR, from just under 10,000 feet most likely, west of New York City)

Jul 12

“In the interest of aviation security, do not leave your baggage unattended. . . .”

No, cut—replace: “For your safety, . . . .”

(My main gripe with the single most obnoxious automated announcement in Newark Airport)

Panhumon (noun): A personal pantheon of mere mortals; a set of others-as-archetypes that one would like to emulate in life

This is a made-up word that could lead to an interesting and useful list of humans I would like to emulate in some way, people I admire for one specific set of traits. The challenge of making an eight- or ten-strong panhumon would be selecting a wide enough variety of people to be as exhaustive as the Greek Olympic Pantheon, for instance, while choosing people with enough care and specificity that each could represent her own archetype, the way Hera and Athena and Artemis and Aphrodite are all Greek goddesses yet share only a sliver of a four-way Venn diagram when it comes to their strengths and personalities.

Before I even make the panhumon, I would have to decide a list of divine characteristics or virtues or faculties that I would like to develop, one that is near-exhaustive, all-inclusive, harmonizes across extremes: e.g., power and peace.

Here are some people that come to mind—only listing public figures here but I imagine my final list would be a mix and would benefit from a mix of personal and public people.

• Jack Conte
• Annie Dillard
• Robert Macfarlane
• Florence Welch
• Caroline Polachek
• Roy Peter Clark / Bryan A. Garner

Actually, after writing this list, my panhumon should exclusively be people I know personally, and I can “draw caricatures” of them by making their best qualities their primary, defining qualities. I don’t actually know anything about the people on that list above, and I mostly admire them for their work. That’s not what I’m getting at. The panhumon is a set of guiding archetypes for how to live. I imagine mine only consisting of seven or eight.

Jul 13

KEYSTROKES! I need to log keystrokes to survive; to thrive, I must expend great amounts of creative energy daily. An “idea guy” who doesn’t habitually stroke keys quickly becomes a coroner.

A good term to know for writing about duality, et. al: rematriating, returning to the divine feminine—from Andrew Holecek’s interview with his publisher Sounds True.

Jul 15

New addition to my list of favorite words: Precipitous, for the “tumbling onto of itself into oblivion” quality of how it looks and sounds, with all those hard consonants colliding, like scree slipping out from underneath your feet.

Jul 17

Skin is the oxidizing minority of body: both rust and sheen.

[[To Itch But Not to Scratch]]

App recommendation from my hair-stylist for a list-making and -sharing app that she’s used for a decade for grocery lists and packing lists: Anylist.

Jul 19

A delightful lyric I just heard while listening to my Dad’s old America album on the song “Old Virginia”:

Don’t think about tomorrow / It’s a whole night’s sleep away.

She cuts butter with a steak-knife when it’s fresh from the fridge, sawing through the plastic package on the printed line that denotes exactly one tablespoon.

Notes on “The First-Ever World-Cup Final Halftime Show”

Overall disorienting—the transitions between songs and acts was like swiping to the next short-form video in a feed. A better word than disorienting is that it was incoherent. There was nothing tying it together, no reason for one song to follow another. I guess the message was “Believe in love”, but, uh, what does that mean? Honestly, the Google Gemini ad was a better piece of composition of art.

Justin Bieber’s performance was great, and it’s got to be hard to serenade the whole world, but it clashed completely with all the other set-piece songs with loud. Even though I’m a fan of Sudeikis and Ted Lasso and Coach, I hated their cameo. It could have worked if JB were the only performer, if their skit was the very beginning of the show, but it was just one of the random acts in the middle. I think we cut to them after BTS’s number.

Let me just capture the list of acts before I forget:

• Madonna mounted on a bedazzled Mad Max vehicle singing “Music Brings the People Together”(?)
• “Orchestra” and some Muppets (!?) playing the intro to White Stripe’s “Seven Nation Army,” prompting the crowd to chant along
• BTS, the K-Pop boy-band performed one of their hits
• Ted Lasso parody skit, subbing in J.B.
• Justin Bieber, guitar only, close-up the entire time, presumably to cover for a stage-change and for Chris Martin ushering all the kids onto the field
• Shakira and friend, both badly lip-syncing—no mic audio at all, in contrast to the loud backing tracks plus live vocals for the other acts
• Children—yes, random little chorally untrained children—singing something about how we should all love each other, a chorus of children with a few mic-ed soloists, among them: Chris Martin of Coldplay. He is the only person of adult height among fifty, sticking out the middle of the ethnically diverse crowd of children.
• The show sort of pesters out with rainbow smoke bombs and the chorus of stars singing and jumping together.

Orchestra is in quotes above because no one was playing their violins or bases or cellos; they were actors dancing. Evidence: I saw a stand-up bassist holding his instrument off the ground, hovering, and I think he was stroking it with a bow. The conductor didn’t even seem to know what he was doing.

I would have much preferred a J.B. show, introduced by Ted Lasso, especially since those three—Jason Sudeikis, Brenden Hunt (Coach Beard), and Justin Bieber—were LITERALLY THE ONLY PERFORMERS WITH HOT MICS AND NO BACKING TRACKS.

Jul 20

Pronouns and their antecedents must share a paragraph.

Here’s a rule of thumb for checking whether your paragraphs are too short or split in the wrong places. If you are using a pronoun whose antecedent is in the previous paragraph, you are breaking your paragraphs in the middle of single ideas. Write paragraphs such that the sentences combine to communicate one main idea, then break to the next idea.

The solution to this problem is not always to merge two paragraphs. Sometimes, it means splitting the latter paragraph to correctly identify when and where you shift to the next idea. Maybe the first sentence of the latter paragraph belongs as the final sentence of the preceding paragraph. In the mildest cases, you may just need to change the pronoun reference to a direct mention of its antecedent, without changing the paragraph breaks.

Interesting comma-splice case in a client’s draft:

Huberman decrees, I follow.

My edit: swap to a semicolon—i.e., “Huberman decrees; I follow.”

The semicolon is important here, because decrees is also a noun. I first read this as an SVO–inverted version of “I follow Huberman’s decrees,” but I saw that the author intended decrees as a verb, with a sort of “Monkey see, monkey do” structure (in this case: “Huberman says; I do”). The semicolon clarifies that these are independent clauses, each with their own subjects and verbs, rather than decrees being the direct object of the verb follow.

Notes on Ryn Weaver’s album The Fool

I was listening to OMAM’s All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade in my Albums playlist, which led into Ryn Weaver’s The Fool, and the intro to “Runaway” had me thinking, once again, Man, I love this album. I wonder whether anyone else agrees that it’s great. A quick search for reviews surfaced a lukewarm consensus, complaining about the track-to-track inconsistencies of style. Here’s the most notable paragraph from Pitchfork’s 4.9/10 review, topping out the publication’s “Pretty bad” band within their 101-point rating schema:

The single introduced us to an artist who could confidently weave between glitchy bubblegum and pounding EDM thrash while delivering a gutsy, emotive performance that deftly plucked at the heartstrings. On the album, Weaver can’t seem to figure out who she is. For half of it, she aims for Lorde-ish post-rap electronic minimalism, on the other for stomping Mumford-style folk-pop. These are disparate, well-trampled sounds that don’t generate any fresh sparks when brought together.

To me, the album’s greatest strength is the variety of genres performed well, and that the tracks still feel cohesive, especially for an artist’s debut. Weaver’s vocals are killer, and the production (which I just learned involved Benny Blanco, Charli XCX, and Passion Pit’s Michael Angelakos) is top-quality, rivaling that of EDM/Pop hits from 2013–2016.

I have 6 of the album’s 11 tracks saved to my Liked Songs, and that ratio is only true for my favorite albums. “Pierre” is the most impressive and probably the best written, also the biggest hit off the album, I think. Yet “Stay Low” and “New Constellations” rip. I’ll stand by that even if none of the critics agree.

Lastly, the Charli XCX–co-written single “OctaHate” against which Pitchfork was comparing all the other tracks on her album is one of the five tracks I have not saved to my library. It’s thin and procedural: Pop-slop, especially with that pounding base and synth. The production overshadows her vocals, and the basic One-chorus-per-minute Pop-song structure limits her songwriting ability that shines in The Fool’s most “avant garde” tracks. I can understand the criticism that this album does not do a good job slotting Weaver into a clear category, neither for music genre and artist persona. It’s not a good music-business album, but it’s a brilliant album.

Oaky, one final note: This album does make me uncomfortable—especially on first listen, but that’s because it bucks the conventions established by, for instance, Lorde’s Pure Heroine and Charli xcx’s True Romance. It was uncomfortably unfamiliar, then, even halfway through—and even more on my second full listen—it became delightfully unfamiliar: singular.

I just discovered the website [Album of the Year (AOTY), a music-rating platform for both critics and fans like IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes for film. Here’s the page for Alessia Cara’s latest album: Love & Hyperbole. Like most quality-judgement-by-committee, there’s bound to be an agenda with skewed ratings by critics for albums of a political subject matter. But if I can filter out that bias, I may find some critically-acclaimed artists I’ve never heard of, maybe find new albums that I love.

Another good resource would be Anthony Fontano’s all-time list (@TheNeedleDrop), a YouTuber with long-form video-essay album reviews that I like. He helped me learn about and appreciate even more both Caroline Polacheck and Laura Marling. The problem is that he has rated Florence + The Machine’s latest four albums only a 7/10—even Dance Fever!, which is the only one I would argue deserves an 8/10.

Haha I just went to watch his review of Dance Feveron YouTube, and this is the top comment:

Fantano’s reviews of FaTM albums are like: “amazing vocals,” “Great production,” “A lot of emotion in the performance,” “Amazing work,” “Beautiful Instrumentals.”

7/10

He says that he could take or leave the interlude tracks with a mention one virtue of “Restraint” but with no nod to “Heaven Is Here,” one of my favorite tracks on the album.

I just read this sentence in a piece of short fiction online (just now, I hesitated to admit that it is a Skyrim fan-fic, which I am reading as genre-research for my own Skyrim fan-fic):

The muted sunlight was already beginning to wane against the blanket of clouds and the brevity of winter days.

In the course of this story, you already know they’re in the far north; you already know it’s not dawn (the travelers have just finished lunch); and you already know it’s winter (via dialogue two paragraphs prior: “and winter nights are deadly cold”).

I like the image of “muted sunlight,” but “wane against the blanket” is the wrong verb-phrase. Given all that, here’s my edit:

The clouds bathed in muted sunlight, reminding of this winter day’s brevity.

Or, even better—more concise and precise:

Muted sunlight harkened the cold and dark.

Jul 21

Today, after a three-month conception and four-year gestation, a book is born.

// Today a book is born, after a three-month conception and four-year gestation.

Jul 22

They are meant to have been together.

(I.e., They were meant to be together, and they were mean to break up.)

I want to find a photographer who will teach me their craft in exchange for me teaching mine, with the shared goal of us both becoming skilled photo-journalists.

Metaphor equates two things. Simile likens two things. Analogy likens two relationships.

A metaphor is a caricature; a simile, a drawbridge; and analogy relates siblings to their cousins.

Jul 24

Please Call Me

As a writer and editor, I work alone with words for most of the day, every day. So, even though it may sound odd, I find texting difficult and draining, because texting feels like work. I will delay spending five seconds to respond to a text—often procrastinating for up to a week or more—but I would happily pause my day, any day, to go on a walk and talk to someone for an hour. Impromptu phone calls are welcome and preferred to texts of emails. Please call me.

Pisgah Recs from Mary, the Ranger at chimney Mountain State Park:

• Art Lobe Trail (30 miles, overnight)
• Pink Beds (6 miles, quartz bedrock, blue lightning bugs)

Jul 26

*Spoiler Warning for Silo

S3, E4: Wonderful twist with the nurse turning and saving Juliet, clever clues so far this season that Robert Simms may be working against The Head of IT, his wife Camille. It was nearly confirmed when he met Juliet in the pump room that he and the nurse had been working together, but it wasn’t confirmed until the final shot, when Juliet finds Bernard alive in the Digger Void. Although this season has felt a little slow and jerky for me so far, this episode absolutely ripped, and I have not been this excited by probably two other times while watching this show, once per season. It seems that Simms and Bernard are working together to find the truth, and, of course, Juliet—with her memories—is essential to uncovering the truth. The fact that Simms didn’t kill Bernard means that he sympathizes with the Outsiders’ motive even if they aren’t colluding. That remains a big open question: whether it’s one rebellious faction (The Outsiders) or two (where Simms and Bernard are working with Lucas Kyle and the nurse, otherwise alone). It seems like the latter, unless Lucas Kyle is not working with either Bernard or Simms, since I would have to assume that there’s no way Bernard could be alive and working with Kyle without he help and involvement of Simms.

Jul 27

Some of my favorite video-games of all time, the first that come to mind:

• Outer Wilds
• Kirby: The Forgotten Lands
• Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag
• Firewatch
• Celeste
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
• Titanfall 2
• Batman: Arkham City
• Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• Pokémon: Emerald

I notice that the reason these games are the most memorable from my life is because they are the best stories I’ve experienced in games. All these games, with the exception of Titanfall’s multiplayer, are finite. I want to play more games like these and maybe, through my work as an editor, help make more games like these.

The role I would be most interested in (as a contractor/freelancer) seems like it would be “narrative designer”, which is essentially developmental editing but using all the components of a game, not just its script and prose. It’s structuring/designing the gameplay experience given the elements of both the game’s mechanics and its story.

Jul 28

The Radial Watch-Face

Years ago, I had this idea to create a one-handed watch based on the system of polar coordinates, where the hand tracked in and out relative to the center (pole), within the hour, and otherwise would wind normally around a 12-hour dial; i.e., (radial distance, polar angle) :: (minute, hour).

There are some design challenges with changing the radial distance of the one hand and resting it on the hour. I’ve been doodling and noodling on it for an hour or so this morning, because I had an idea: I could hide the “back end” of the one hand under the left half of the face, which could display the date and maybe sunrise/sunset and p.m./a.m. So, it would be a semi-circular, 12-hour watch-face, where the hand snaps from hour to hour yet tracks continuously out from the pole toward the edge of the face to indicate the minutes, the hour growing.

Today, I learned about an uncommon but well established mechanism in watches called “retrograde” or “flyback,” where the hand moves along a set radial arc and then, once it hits the end, snaps back to reset. That would be essential for this watch design, but I’m not sure whether or how it could be implemented on the track that would “pull back” the hand to “reset” the minutes (radial distance) for a new hour.

I also began researching existing one-handed watches, and there’s a chance that this is actually what I’m looking for. Maybe it already exists. The idea of the polar/radial watch is to approach time in a more relaxed way, forgetting about seconds entirely and only knowing the time within a quarter-hour window with any accuracy. These watches already exist, and there are a few I’ve already found that I love. So, maybe rather than designing an entirely new watch design, I should just try to design my own one-handed watch and forget the “polar coordinate” idea. Maybe the Radial Watch would be best for a digital face rather than a mechanical one. That I could probably design on my own.

Here is MeisterSinger, a one-handed watch brand, a brand that I am initially impressed by and drawn to because of their philosophy and copy. A one-handed watch is more like a sundial. We only added minute and second hands as we made our human world more industrial.

I also love this 24-hour watch, much closer to my price-range than the MeisterSingers, from a post on Reddit: the Svalbard Noonday.

I’m much more apt to buy from Svalbard, especially after browsing more of their options—very creative and high-concept—like their 24-hour Yin-Yang Watch and their Retrograde Jump Hour “Time Travel” watch inspired by a car’s tachometer and their 24-hour Sol Og Måne (“Sun and Moon”) watch. It’s an international brand inspired by that remote polar archipelago where they pay people to travel to and live in, gifting jobs and land. I met a guy in Silverthorne, CO, who studied abroad there for a semester in college. All the students were trained to shoot rifles and were required to carry one at all times out of doors, in case they would encounter a polar bear.

Last note, if I did make the Polar/Radial Watch, it would probably move anti-clockwise, because that’s how the polar coordinate system is designed, with the radians increasing from 0º at “3 o’clock” around to 180º at “9 o’clock,” then back around the bottom half of the circle to 360º.

Oh, wait! New idea: Rather than progressing the single hand back and forth through a track, maybe the watch face itself dilates, revealing a colored base beneath itself, to make the minutes/radius within the hour, in which case the hand would be static and snap between the hour markers along the face.

Okay, one more thing to consider, after seeing these single-hour retrograde watches: What if the hour is the radial distance and the minute is the angle? In that case, the single hand would only have to “track back” once per day. Okay, yes, if I were to design this thing, this would be it. It’s a one-hour retrograde watch, like this one, but rather than there being a display of the hour, it would be determined by the radial length of the hand. Imagine it as a semi-circular face with 12 concentric circles mapped onto the face, equidistant from one another, rippling out from the pole. No, that would get too cluttered.

Okay, final idea for the day on this: Imagine it as a normal 12-hour face but with a single hand that snaps around from hour to hour and tracks back and forth to indicate minutes by radial distance. So, it would be like this retrograde watch but with only the hour-hand. And rather than the minute-hand snapping back, it would be the hour-hand tracking back at the start of each hour. in this case, maybe it has four alternating color-bands, concentric circles, to indicate each quarter hour. So, when the colored indicator segment of the hand is spanning one band, you know within which quarter-hour segment the time is. So, there would only be four radial positions for the hand, one for each band, to indicate: 1–15 minutes, 16–30 minutes, 31–45 minutes, 46–60 minutes. Within the first several seconds of the first minute of each hour, the hand snaps to the next of the twelve theta-positions and resets the indicator to the first band, nearest to the center, the lowest radial distance. I think it would be most satisfying if it tracked back and then snapped over to the next hour. Also, this could be timed such that it is a 15-second process or something, where you would actually know to the second when the next hour begins, by when the hand snaps over to its next angle.

There is an option for this to be a semi-circular design too, where it’s the top half of the watch, like theta = 0 to theta = pi, and the hand would progress anti-clockwise, hiding the back end underneath the bottom half of the face. But that back half would a different-colored indicator on it, to indicate p.m. So, rather than the watch snapping back at noon, it just continues its rotation, and the a.m. part becomes hidden under the bottom-half of the face. The key change from a.m. to p.m., then, is to reverse the direction of the radial tracking, since it’s the indicator at the other end that will need to progress through quarter-hour bands. In that way, I guess, it would be like a 24-hour clock, in that the one hand would complete one full rotation per day. That seems elegant and doable to me, as long as the radial tracking mechanism is possible. I think it becomes easier if it’s discrete, with only four positions, rather than continuous. There would be no continuous movement of the hand. At any snapshot in time, the watch shows a snapshot of the time, indicating the hour and the quarter-hour. With this semi-circular design, each hour is separated by 15º (i.e., 180º/12). That’s a good interval for each hour to be perceptible.

Jul 29

Myriad the Noun vs. Myriad the Verb

This is a preference, not an issue of correctness. I prefer myriad used as an adjective: e.g., “myriad interpretations.” The noun form, in Bryan A. Garner’s words, "has been with us more than 200 years longer than the adjective: e.g., “the myriad of interpretations.” If you prefer myriad as a noun, use it as a noun. I prefer it the adjective for its superior economy and delightful phonetic quality.

Jul 30

Important and ambitious editing project idea: Create a New, Synthesized English Translation of the Tao te Ching

At the end of this past ski season, I acquired Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao te Ching; the books-and-coffee shop in Crested Butte had a wonderful variety of English translations, maybe four or five, including Ursula K. Le Guin’s. I chose Mitchell’s from the bunch because I preferred his version of my favorite chapter, Chapter 42. It is the best Chapter 42 translation I have ever read, and it communicates the meaning as I have always understood it.

That said, as I was reading Mitchell’s translation today, I see that I disagree with some of his other choices, most notably his choice to use “Master” to refer to the enlightened one who walks The Way rather than my preference of “Sage,” as it is used in the Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo translation I have.

So, this would be a blasphemous project where I essentially pick and choose the word choices and line-translations I think are most apt and cobble together a new English translation from the best four or five English translations I can find. It’s blasphemous because I am no Chinese scholar; I have no authority other than my taste. But maybe that’s enough for this to be valuable to people; regardless, the project would be worthwhile for it stretching my mind and my editing skills in a new direction. I would start with a couple of my favorite chapters, Chapter 8 and Chapter 42, and use those to decide my four or five reference versions. Then, I’d go chapter by chapter, making a collage of translations resulting in a new English translation of the Tao te Ching.

This would be something I publish for free on my site, an editing project in a similar vein as my edit of DFW’s “Authority & American Usage.” I would also write a meta-essay about the project noting the principles I have decided that make the translation a coherent piece of work.

Not only would this be valuable to people and help me hone my editing skills but—as the DFW edit did for teaching me the content of that essay and his nonfiction style—this also would yield a much deeper understanding of and a more deeply rooted memory in me for the teachings of this text.

Soon, maybe this weekend, I should go ahead and do this on a smaller scale—an MVP, if you will—using the two translations I have, to make my “collage version” of Chapters 8 and 42.

Here’s my complaint to IngramSpark about the 31 defective copies in my first print-run of 100. I’m saving it here, because my images are failing to upload, so I can’t complete my ticket right now (because I have actual work to do!), and I know it’s going to time me out, and I’ll have to fill out the ticket again when I go back to it:

Batch A: JSHW080916180726, R14621800001B/R146218PG105024JSX00001B/1

• Trim errors skewing the cover vertically upwards, leaving white line along the bottom and asymmetrical borders around the cover art
• Trim errors also effect the interior, most notably cutting off the top margin such that the running heads have less padding

Batch B: JSHW081956120726, 105024JS00005B/14 Trim errors, skewing the cover horizontally either right or left, making the spine text misaligned, such that the title and author name are not centered on the spine

Other errors across both batches include:

• Damage to the matte finish on the spine on two copies (both pictured).
• Odd printing of the author portrait photo on the back covered (pictured with comparison).

Note that all attached images are of separate errors on separate copies. These errors, especially the white line along the edge of the cover, make these 31 copies unfit to be sold. Photos include evidence of the above: misprinted, skewed covers, misaligned text on spine, clipped and asymmetrical margins on cover, damage to spine at corner.

Also note that this book is a 5" x 7" paperback. These errors are egregious enough that I expect the book’s cover and its pages were cut using settings for a different trim size. The final photo in the bunch is an image of one of the best-printed copies from my order, and even it is noticeably asymmetrical and not centered. Yet, it is within the allowable error range. That copy is one of the ones I am willing to sell, though it is not ideal. But there are 31 copies that I definitely need replaced.

Jul 31

My “Collage Translation” of the Tao te Ching’s Chapter 42 (v1)

The Tao engenders One. One engenders Two. Two engenders three. And the third brings forth the ten thousand things.

The ten thousand things carry yin at their backs and yang within their embrace. Yin and yang, shade and sunlight, Vital energies blending into harmony.

Ordinary men fear destitution, yet the Sage makes use of it, embracing his lowliness, realizing she is one with the universe.

//

Reference 1: Stephen Mitchell’s Translation

The Tao gives birth to One. / One gives birth to Two. / Two gives birth to Three. / Three gives birth to all things.

All things have their back to the female / and stand facing the male. / When male and female combine, / all things achieve harmony.

Ordinary men hate solitude, / But the Master makes use of it, / embracing his aloneness, realizing / he is one with the whole universe.

Reference 2: The Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo Translation

TAO engenders One. / One engenders Two. / Two engenders Three. / Three engenders the ten thousand things.

The ten thousand things carry shade / And embrace sunlight. / Shade and sunlight, yin and yang, / Breath blending into harmony.

Humans hate / To be alone, poor, and hungry. / Yet kings and princes / Use these words as titles / We gain by losing / Lose by gaining.

What others teach, I also teach: / A violent man does not die a natural death. / This is the basis of my teaching.

Reference 3: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Translation (via theWayAndItsVirtue.com—still need to acquire this translation myself)

The way bears one. / One bears two. / Two bears three. / The three bear the ten thousand things. / The ten thousand things / carry the yin on their shoulders / and hold in their arms the yang, / whose interplay of energy / makes harmony.

People despise / orphans, widowers, outcasts. / Yet that’s what kings and rulers call themselves. / Whatever you lose, you’ve won. / Whatever you win, you’ve lost.

What others teach, I say too: / violence and aggression / destroy themselves. / My teaching rests on that.

My “Collage Translation” of the Tao te Ching’s Chapter 8 (v1)

Best to be like water, which benefits the ten thousand things without contention. It pools in the low places that people disdain. Water knows the Tao.

Dwell in the valley. Think deep as a spring. Give without expectation. Govern as a riverbank, not as a dam. Stand by your word. Do nourishing work. Be completely present.

Only do not contend, and you will find the way.

//

Reference 1: Stephen Mitchell’s Translation

The supreme good is like water, / which nourishes all things without trying to. / It is content with the low places that people disdain. / Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. / In thinking, keep to the simple. / In conflict, be fair and generous. / In governing, don’t try to control. / In work, do what you enjoy. / In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself / and do not compare or compete, / everybody will respect you.

Reference 2: The Stephen Addiss & Stanley Lombardo Translation

Best to be like water, / Which benefits the ten thousand things / And does not contend. / It pools where humans disdain to dwell, / Close to the TAO.

Live in a good place. / Keep your mind deep. / Treat others well. / Stand by your word. / Make fair rules. / Do the right thing. / Work when it’s time.

Only do not contend, / And you will not go wrong.

Reference 3: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Translation (via theWayAndItsVirtue.com)

True goodness / is like water. / Water’s good / for everything. / It does not compete.

It goes right / to the low loathsome places / and so finds the way.

For a house, / the good thing is level ground. / In thinking, / depth is good. / The good of giving is magnanimity; / of speaking, honesty; / of government, order. / The good of work is skill, / and of action, timing.

No competition, / so no blame.

On the New Fucking Face Scanners at Airport Security

This is an audio-transcribed rant that I hope comes out somewhat coherent. I just went through security and have been forced into the new way of things. The line logistics seemed odd to me. The corral was split into different vertical cues lined up with fucking face scanners one TSA agent made an announcement that these are the lines for people with IDs or passports, and that young children would need to go elsewhere. I asked that man, Across two lanes of traffic, whether we can opt out of the photo. He told me to ask the agent in my lane, which I did, and he obliged. When I went through, I asked him whether this is the new way of things. He confirmed and assured me that he does not like it. Neither do I.

I’m not sure what’s more disconcerting: being led like cattle to feed (or to slaughter) through narrow corrals—our identities reduced to biomarkers, branded by Real IDs, a euphemism for “3-D face-scan”— or more disconcerting that everyone around me seemed unbothered and cattle-like already. I was the only one I noticed, who asked not to be photographed, as I am every time I face one of those fucking cameras. Today, I also noticed that they no longer post signs, reminding you that you can opt out has it all worked so well, all the docile-training, that we are so comfortable being so violated?

This is a brand new thing. I have traveled several times this summer already, and this was the first time where every passenger in the airport was led through those fucking cameras. Where is the rebellion? This came about too quickly for us to all be accepting it so readily . The surveillance state is no conspiracy; it is next weeks’s reality.

Final thought: I was in a dandy mood before being utterly appalled at what awaited me at the end of that line: TSA agents reduced to robot-maintenance techs, arbitration of human safety outsourced to algorithms. My immediate and overwhelming feeling was fear of the vision this experience conjured in my head for our future, my future. Immediately, I decided that I would rather never fly again, then be subject to the invasion of privacy and denial of freedoms that seems inevitable. That said, I cling to the belief that as a response, cities integrations of the individual, we humans will revolt; equally inevitable is a cultural correction in favor of unbridled freedom.

These fucking face-scanning cameras are an affront to the human spirit, and the only way I can imagine that offense being worth it is if these cameras eradicate human trafficking or negate some likewise more egregious violation of spirit.