or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation
But as of 12:30 this afternoon, thanks to the intercession of my cousin Jeff and a new modem from Verizon, Plummer’s Hollow has high-speed internet once again.
How can we live without the unknown before us? —Rene Char
Via Negativa’s first book-spawn!
Order from the publisher or
Contact me for a signed copy or to barter for your own book. Central PA residents can buy it at Webster's, where I'm doing a reading on April 10.-
"On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects."
— Sei Shonagon, 994 A.D.
Welcome
This is the weblog of Dave Bonta, a poet, editor, and shutterbug from the eastern edge of western Pennsylvania. For background on the site, see the About page. For more about me, see my Google profile.
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Hehehe! Glad your DSL is back.
Ah, but you had time to appreciate the bird song!
I love that slug!!!
but I am not coming to fetch him or her or it
I want to congratulate you
on how well you kept your cool
through what was
I know from experience
a horrible terrible experience
If you drag the handle back and forth along the bottom of the video, you can make it look like the slug is super-quick.
Cool! I’m about to move house (down to Charlottesville, VA) but once I get online from down there, I’ll be happily following your posts again!
Marja-Leena – Me too, as you can imagine. Back to being an addict…
Laura – Quite right.
suzanne – Slugs and snails are hermaphrodites, so “s/he,” I guess.
Harry – Good tip! I’ve always loved time-lapse photography.
David – Good luck on your move.
This post comes exactly forty days after you let us know you lost your DSL connection. (Forty days if, Bible-like, you count the starting point as a day.) That’s a long, slow fast.
Welcome back to this century, dude.
:-)
Yay! You have your high speed connection back. Welcome to the world where a ten second wait is the height of anguish.
I can’t help but feel the snail video is a visual metaphore for dial-up connections. Glad to have you back in hyperwarp again, though, although the only one to suffer was you, since your posts were still lovely and we still got to see them all along.
Peter – It was really 40 days? That’s scary.
Lorianne – Thanks.
robin andrea – Yeah, but it’ll probably take a while for the feeling to wear off that this high-speed thing is too good to be true.
Joan – Thanks. But only with high-speed can I upload stunning videos like this one.
As good as a poem, Dave. Actually, I found the clip deeply relaxing – like listening to Brian Eno!
What a fantastic way to announce your return to, uh, I nearly send the real world. Let’s say life in the fast lane. That has to be the best soundtrack ever. And that slug looks very like one I saw yesterday. Perhaps they are related.
The slight irregularities of the camera movement made me suddenly think about your breathing, heart beating. Beautiful sounds, too.
Think of the silvery trail you must have left this summer.
Dick – That’s cool. I wasn’t prepared for anyone to actually like the clip, other than me, so I’m kind of surprised at the reception here.
rr – Yes, that was a bit of serendipity, I’d say (though I shot the movie over a month ago). Now if you wrote a poem about the fast lane today, that would be downright spooky.
mb – Glad you liked the shaking. A made a second short movie of that slug with the tripod, but it wasn’t quite as compelling, for some reason.
Slug and snail locomotion always makes me think of a very low-flying magic carpet.
I didn’t realize there was a video here until I clicked over… dang bloglines.
I can’t get over how different your birds sound compared to ours. Your yellowthroat has a yankee accent I think. :) And there are a few in there I don’t recognize at all. That loudest one, with the three same-tone notes, what is that?
Karen – Yeah, it didn’t come through in the emailed version, either. I’m going to have to start adding a note for subscribers when I post a video (there’s a technical fix, I think, but I’m too lazy to explore it, for as often as I post videos).
I’m not sure what that loudest bird is, to be honest. The microphone in my camera is pretty lousy, giving everything a tinny sound. I’ll get my mom to listen to it and get back to you.