Daily Archives: June 14, 2013

Latin, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Getting Good

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Beltane                                                                        Solstice Moon

I’ve let the creative writing business slide for a couple of weeks, just got out of the rhythm with garden and other matters.  That Loft class starts in three weeks and I want to get further along in my revision before then.

Been reading information about learning plateaus, as I wrote below and I’m certainly on a plateau in both the writing and the Latin right now.  Just plugging away.  Read a piece drawing on work in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest that suggested embracing the struggle, the sameness, the lack of progress or even the regression.  Makes sense to me.  When I can remember it.

It’s easy for me to fall into the despair trap.  The one where lack of progress proves lack of talent, lack of smarts, lack.  I fell into it for several years with the writing.  I had this mindset, either you’re doing it or you’re not.  Obviously not true.  Learning anything takes time, often lots of time.  That 10,000 hours stuff, I don’t know about that, but it does take a long time to get good at anything.

(Dreamer of Dreams, Edmund Dulac)

 

Garden, Great Wheel, Our Land and Home

Heat

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Beltane                                                                              Solstice Moon

All beds but one mulched and that one I want to plant some carrots in tomorrow or Sunday.  Planted another row of carrots in the large raised bed today.  Put down jubilate and transplant water on the carrot seeds and on the leeks.  Having the heat is good, the tomatoes, peppers and egg plants need it.  Now this isn’t much heat, I know, if you’re reading this in, say, Riyadh or Singapore, but still it counts here.

The growing season has begun to rock on.  I thinned some early beets and onions today, the strawberries have fruit and all the orchard trees have fruit, too.  Kate’s already given away rhubarb and lilacs, plus tomato marmalade from crops awhile ago.

In just one week the sun will hit it’s peak height here in the northern hemisphere:  “The summer solstice occurs when the tilt of a planet’s semi-axis, in either the northern or the southern hemisphere, is most inclined toward the star (sun) that it orbits. Earth’s maximum axial tilt toward the sun is 23° 26′. This happens twice each year, at which times the sun reaches its highest position in the sky as seen from the north or the south pole.”(Tauʻolunga)

After that, as the maximal tilt gives way, slowly, the days grow shorter, the dark begins to dominate and I move into my favorite half of the year, the part headed toward the winter solstice.  Though I love the growing season, it doesn’t feed me in the same way the gradual darkening and cold does.

It’s great right now though, heat for the plants, which will, ironically, feed me when the dark season comes.