April Diary 5: Dutchman’s breeches, sorcery, glutes

 

Dear April today a fat porcupine led me to an early-blooming patch of Dutchman’s breeches so it was a very good day

also i climbed a new-to-me mountain and met a lot of fantastic trees and rocks

(i’m not even kidding, i still get genuinely excited by cool-looking trees and rocks)

i’ve read maybe six poems today; mostly i was walking and snapping photos

the walk did generate some haiku but i thought maybe for once i’d hold them back and, i don’t know, maybe even submit them somewhere

as an inveterate online self-publisher i feel a little dirty even admitting that

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during bouts of insomnia i’ve been reading a tome about Viking-age sorcery and last night I was struck by some of the translations of Sami magic specialists:

Types of Magic-Workers

according to Neil Price

• one who harms by sorcery
• one who harms and cures by sorcery
• one who cures with the help of conjurations
• one who performs wonders
• one who bewitches people’s sight
• one who knows a thing or two
• one who creates illusions
• one who whispers
• one who dreams

The book by the way is The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia

Neil Price is a brilliant historical anthropologist but if you’re not up on Viking studies this text wouldn’t be the best way in

you still have to just start with Egil’s Saga and have your mind blown

(Snorri’s Egil Skallagrimson is for my money the most compelling portrayal of a poet in all of world literature. poet and part-troll. but really more of a gangsta rapper, let’s be honest)

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ever since I decided that boredom was no longer my enemy it simply vanished (tweet from yesterday)

can’t decide which sounds better, “gluteus maximus” or “butt muscle” (tweet from today)

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