A pretty good day...

I say that, even though I did not get a whole lot of translation done.

Alla and I did drive around a bit this morning, looking for garage sales. At about the only one we ran across, I picked up a copy of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, and Other Poems, published by City Lights Books in San Fransisco, for next to nothing. Personally, I have never been big Ginsberg fan, but I bought a copy of the same paperback when we lived in California (as a souvenir of having visited the bookshop), and his Howl sort of set the standard for me for free verse, as so often since then, I've read entirely too many attempts at free verse that seem as if the author simply decided to insert carriage returns randomly in an otherwise mundane text.

Dromgoole's, our local pen and paper emporium, held a Wahl-Eversharp event during the day today, and Syd Saperstein, who brought the company back into existence, made a presentation after business hours, at the pen club meeting, that I found pretty informative., The major takeaways (for me) of Saperstein's talk was the importance of assembling a top-notch set of contractors when manufacturing a product (he actually hinted that this information was on the level of a trade secret) and an explanation of a curious technique (involving eBay) for managing the expectations of potential customers with regard to the price of a new product (vis à vis the price of vintage products of roughly the same style).

That said, it's not as if I got zero translation done today. I plan to get even more completed tomorrow.

Cheers...

My Own Private Zodiac

I listened with interest to Anthony Metivier's podcast on memorizing the zodiac, then adapted what I learned to achieve the same goal. I decided to go with a "dream sequence" approach (you'll see what I mean, below) instead of a memory palace because (a) I've long ago internalized the ordering of months and what might be considered the arcane names of the signs (e.g., Sagittarius, Gemini, etc.), so if I create a sequence linked to just the months, I figure I'm golden, and (b) I'm a little short on spare memory palaces at the moment .

Here we go...

I am standing in a narrow enclosed roadway, looking at Fredric March behind the wheel of a Dodge RAM (Aries) pickup truck that is pointed at me. I hear "Give Me That Old Time Religion" being sung as it was in the movie Inherit the Wind. The truck advances, and I have no choice but to move backward, through a gate...

...into a bullfighting arena. There is a bull (Taurus) in the arena, being chased by a dancing woman with a silencer-and-shoulder-stock equipped pistol (April Dancer, who was The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. back in the late 60s... Her character was that of a high-tech spy—you just had to be there).

The bull sees me, and starts to charge. At this moment, twin clowns (Gemini) wearing inflatable (Mae West, i.e., May) life jackets climb into the arena from opposite ends and start signaling upward, toward...

...a large quadcopter equipped with crab (Cancer) pincers, which is piloted by (and making sounds like) Rocky the Flying Squirrel (a woman named June Foray was the voice of Rocky). The craft maneuvers to a point directly above me ...

...grabs me, lifts me out of the bull's reach, and flies away, depositing me gently in a clearing the middle of a forest. A lion (Leo) is resting in the clearing. The animal ignores me, preferring to groom itself. Every time it licks itself, fireworks (July) go off.

I am tapped on the shoulder by a virgin maiden (Virgo. How can I tell? Hey, cut some slack, it's a dream!) wearing only a beige toga (as worn by Augustus Caesar). She wordlessly takes me by the hand and leads me through the woods...

...to a paved road where there is a truck scale (Libra) where she leaves me. I note that the scale shows weight by the position of a hammer "needle" on a sickle "dial". (Hammer-and-sickle -> statue of Worker and Kolkhoz Woman in Moscow -> my Labor Day image -> September).

As I continue to examine the scale, a scurrying sound attracts my attention. I turn to see a scorpion (Scorpio) closing in on me. Its head is a Jack O'Lantern (October).

An arrow suddenly appears in the scorpion's head, killing it. I turn my head and see an archer (Sagittarius) dressed like a Pilgrim (November). He motions for me to follow him and we set off down the road.

We shortly arrive at a bridge, where I look down and see Santa Claus (December) trying to harness an animal that is half goat and half fish (Capricorn) to his sleigh.

Santa catches sight of me and points at a two-headed guy (Janus -> January) picking up goatskin water bags, in preparation for carrying them somewhere (Aquarius). The two-headed guy points to a bag that he can't pick up because of his load and asks for help, so I grab it and follow him.

He leads me to a swimming pool that stands before a replica of the Iwo Jima monument (February, because the invasion of Iwo Jima began that month), where he sets down his bags and relieves me of mine. As he thanks me for my help, I notice there are huge fish (Pisces) in the pool.

Done.

P.S. Looking at the above, it seems like an awful lot of text to explain something that's fairly straightforward. However, the way this plays out in my mind is a lot faster than it takes to explain it.

Regarding date ranges. Keeping in mind that the start/end dates for these signs are different, depending on the source you consult, I'm relying on a "standard" range of the 20th of the "sign month" to the 20th of the following month, except for July through November, where I rely on the 23rd to the 23rd.

P.P.S. That said, from a practical perspective, it'd be instructive, I think, to figure out (or have help figuring out) how to "attach" additional data to images already created at a memory palace station (for example, how might I "attach" the various symbols—e.g., ♈, ♉, etc.—for the signs?). Lynne Kelly hints at this in her work, noting how, for example, "the Navajo memorise over 700 insects to three levels of classification, along with all their characteristics." I cannot help but assume that such a system did not just pop into existence fully formed. It had to have evolved, no?