WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

  • Continuity | “a continuous sense of self”

    many beads on top of a basket, a shower of colors

    Photo by sb

    Beads on a string, that’s how I’ve imagined other people’s lives. Ordered, organized, in order. Whereas my beads are loose, a handful of beads, handsful of beads. Some have rolled away and never returned. Perhaps they were never strung on a string; perhaps the thread broke and they fell in a beads-fall of confusion. 

    Other people could describe/ outline their past, manage their present, and even speak of their future as a certain thing. They knew where they would go on vacation next year. My past was spotty, a confusion of memories. The present was often unmanageable, a tangle. And the future — how could anyone know? 

    I’ve always understood that I’ve lost thousands of days. That they sank into an ocean of others. Too much sameness? Too little attention? Or even, perhaps, too much attention at the time. Too present to record? 

    But there is one day, one specific day, that I know I lost. That I know I will never remember. 

    (more…)
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  • snapshot poem 03 June 02026


    sometimes sleep 
    is a stranger 

    it sulks 
    in another room 

    it wants to be 
    somewhere else 

    i open the blind 
    to see the moon 

    it is elsewhere too 


    ~ sb

  • Claude can’t tell me what happens next.

    Digital collge in mostly grays, with some green elements: leaves, butterfly, flower, frog. A masked woman with wings in a window is the center image
    Digital collage by sb. Full credits at flickr.

    It’s been several weeks now that I’ve been reading and watching videos about AI, trying to educate myself. I have no computer science education, so much of this is over my head. Which is ok, as I am mostly interested in how this will affect us. All of us. 

    The predictions still range from catastrophic to glorious, same as the fantasy and sci-fi I’ve read and watched since childhood. There really does not seem to be any new or more reliable information on which way this will go. 

    It does strike me that many of those with the closest relation to the technology are the most pessimistic. None, however, offer any more specific information than the aforementioned fictional novels. Should I then rate their opinions higher than others, who claim no specific connection to the LLM’s under development? Apparently we all read the same novels.

    (more…)
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  • W.W.W. Nostalgia

    Digital collage by sbpoet. Blue denim background with butterfly, bird, and other pretty elements.

    Blue Collage by sbpoet for Ironscrapper, a challenge at scraporchard

    As I struggle to get my blog back up, I am hit by a gale of nostalgia. Nostalgia is a word I have seen roll through my media threads lately, but let it go by, unknowing that it would soon be relevant. 

    In the early years, 02003 was my first posting attempt, it was very different. The World Wide Web was not The Internet. Of course time has dimmed my memories, and no doubt shifted them as well. What I remember is a blogging community, people whom I met only online, who helped and encouraged me. 

    Some of you are still here. I wasn’t, for a few years. I see the vacancies in the resurrected blog, the months of silence. No doubt I was silent elsewhere, too; silent on the blogs of my WWW friends. 

    Now, I miss it. All of it. The community, the fresh excitement of meeting someone new, someone interesting, a new way of making language, new thinking, new art. New eyes. 

    We built something. Now I discover that I was not the only one to fade. I learn that blogrolls are obsolete, that writers no longer exchange links and comments and follows that lead, eventually, to more of the same. 

    I learn that nostalgia is a kind of grief. 

                            the buddha in the window well
                            wet with spring rain
                            remembers snow, its white shawl
    Blogging, poem, small poem, , , ,

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  • Caturday

    one black & white kitten (Bonbon) and one tuxedo kitten (Basho)
    Basho & Bonbon July 2025 – they are bigger now
    When I began Blogging, it was Friday Cat Blogging. I was once called by a reporter for the New York Times who did a story on this popular blog meme. Now it's Caturday. Anyone know how/who started this one?
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