DonJaime's New Writeups

March 1, 2013 (log)

2013-03-01T23:42:45Z

Time

All you have to do is avoid death and poverty for twenty-odd years and you find yourself surrounded by piles of old useless Stuff. Since I do not want such piles to take over my life I spent some time today sorting through two drawers full of old modems (in three different sizes), parallel port printer, USB and telephone cables, a scanner, floppy disks, memory in small dimensions,

and paper. With writing on it.

Among this paper was some poetry left over from the late 80s. It's been sorted through before, so most of it isn't as bad as expected, but there is one sheet of yellowing A4 that is going straight to the recycling bin, even if it does have one good line in it:

"Around us soft betrayals raging"

Well, I liked it. Sobre gustos no hay nada escrito.

It's an example of the "slather it on thick and say it twenty times in as many different ways"…

Flesh wounds (poetry)

2012-12-13T12:09:41Z

You dared to begin
And you did not stop
Undressing me when I was naked.
You took off my skin
And crawled inside me
While my love
Was crying inside you.

I did my best
To dress again
In skin that no longer fit me.
But I took you home
Behind my eyes
Then filled them
With the sight of another.

I was careless, it seems
When I dressed in haste
And I did not swallow you whole.
There are parts of you
Stuck all over my skin
And I tear
As I try to remove them.

Too late to heal
With this lonely flesh
The wounds I left in your body,
Love bleeds.

March 12, 2012 (poetry)

2012-03-12T09:34:22Z

On getting Something off my Chest

There was something on my chest
Near the bottom of my ribcage
Like a spot
Or a bite
And it had been there for months.

And when I scratched it
My arm itched
On the inside of my elbow
Because everything
In this world
Is One.

Today it itched again
And I took a proper look at it
And I took out the thorn
That I had been carrying
For months.

In an ideal world
This would be a metaphor
For Something
Profound.

reduction (poetry)

2011-12-06T23:12:59Z

Let us not reduce THIS to THAT
But let us not reduce THAT either:
Mind and body

Body and mind
Are one, as
My mind and your body, and

My body and your mind
At times
Are one.

Zealandia (place)

2011-12-01T08:23:10Z

What is a continent? Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Antarctica are the usually listed suspects. But then Australia is sometimes referred to as an/the 'island' continent, implying that it somehow doesn't count. Presumably because it's smaller. Which would imply that New Zealand (for example) would have no chance of qualifying. But why should size matter? Short answer: it doesn't.

You may be used to thinking of the Earth as a ball of hard stuff, such as rock. But that is only because you are crawling around on the outside of it. The Earth is a hot and heavy ball, covered in a layer of hot liquid, covered in a thick layer of swirling gloopy hot toothpaste. The heat is what keeps the gloop in motion, creating ever-changing convection currents. On the outside, where it is coldest, the gloop acquires a thin frozen crust, which the currents soon drag back into the heat, where it melts.

…

Breast is best (how-to)

2011-12-01T08:22:35Z

Or: how to calm a baby on a plane

To reduce the pressure difference that the aircraft skin has to withstand at high altitudes, the pressure inside passenger aeroplanes is allowed to drop to about 60% of its average sea-level value. The only part of a human being that might be adversely affected by the relatively rapid changes in pressure that this entails is the eardrum, which can be painfully stretched or can rupture if there is too great a pressure difference from one side of it to another.

Adults are not too badly affected by this: the space inside the ear drums is connected to the throat by the eustachian tubes, and adults who do not have otorhinolaryngic conditions do not have any significant problems opening them to allow the pressure to equalise, either by yawning or by swallowing.

Babies have more of a problem. They do not know the reason for the pain in their ears and they do not know how to yawn or swallow deliberately. Nor…