The cloud mimicked a mountain top, its ridge sun fired to bright white by the rising sun, its shadow side in granite gray, being impenetrable to the sun's rays. Mountains that imposing live a thousand miles away, but that cloud took me there. the morning sun lights up a dense cloud to mimic mountains
At dusk, the temple yard is silent. A twiggy tree twists and leans, shading no one but seemingly stretching toward something unknown. Nothing can be heard, save the buzz of low-flying insects when they get too near. Then someone clangs the brass bell -- just one sharp snap of the bell tongue. But the tone hangs in the night air, piercing something unseen. temple yard at dusk, the silence is broken by the brass bell
Flipping open the tent flap, I see a vast and glowing night sky. It's not the shabby patch of light points of my sky at home. Here, high in the mountains, far from any city, I can make out bands of color and dazzling webs of luminosity. And I can feel the tininess that past men must have felt, a diminished sense of importance that's hard to come by for a human standing on the Earth, where flags are planted everywhere and grand monuments to our pomposity are packed into dense clusters. mountain sky. the cloudless night glows infinite
The tawny landscape was tinged with the green that landlubbers take on in rolling seas or flatlanders show on a high mountain pass. The world looked like it was being viewed through shooter's glasses -- except for the azure infinity overhead that was unafflicted by sickly hues. Railroad tracks arced the length of the valley and it was a long valley - so long the tracks almost looked line like. The lack of other signs of humanity might have led one to believe it was the train to nowhere, but there was a solitary station in the middle of the valley and there can't be a station in the middle of nowhere on the way to nowhere. Or, can there be? Maybe, nowhere is like infinity, existing in larger and smaller degrees. a single building and a long covered platform, but just i, waiting
The egret stands on stiff, still legs. By contrast, its neck is coiled into a sinuous strike position. For a long time, only its eyes move, saccading in time with the darting prey below the water's mirrored surface. The egret plays shrub, hoping to lure tiny fish into its shadow, within striking distance of its flexible neck. the egret stands, moving only its eyes... then spears water
Struggling to wiggle its wings, the butterfly warms in the morning sun. Is it like sleep paralysis - that hypnopompic impulse to flee that's stymied by stuck muscles? What's a wind gust or rapidly advancing shadow like for the butterfly? Normally, such occurrences would provoke an erratic fluttering away. But now the screaming instinct to wing away can't be answered. Does the butterfly know dread, or does it just quietly await the moment it's unfrozen? cool morning - a butterfly twitches, but can't yet fly
Rubble cubes lie like piled dice. Temples and throne halls collapsed into mossy blocks brought low by the meager -- if inexorable -- forces of water drips and grass roots, roots that became wedges, splitting stone from stone. People push the blocks back together in homage to ancestors, but turn one's back and the hungry jungle consumes. Those ancestors crafted such sturdy stuff out of stout stone blocks. How much more quickly will our planned obsolescent cities be swallowed? stout stone blocks - toppled, dissolved, buried - a city swallowed
Beside a pond, a tree reaches, its branches stretched wide and skyward, blocking the harsh cloud-penetrating rays. Locals sit on the lush grass, their backsides wet, their backs resting on the rough and slanting trunk. They watch ripples echo outward from the mouth tips of feeding fish, those concentric rings etched into in the mirrored waters - and yet moving. In time, watchers will become ripple mesmerized, and will experience the stiff twitch and head nods of an impending nap. sitting pondside, ripples from feeding fish lull my mind
Life overtakes all. Moss coats stone; vines smother shrubs; trees straddle walls. All growing in splotched patterns of green -- a million shapes of leaf in a million subtly different shades. My world is awash in green. My mind is soothed by deep greens, and fired by the bright light-greens of fresh growth. My periphery swirls and blurs with green. a mossy stone becomes my focal point, the fringe blurs
One tree stands in the temple yard, slanting but stable, its bare limbs lazily spiral skyward. Its trunk is gnarled and its branches are twisted and it makes the old ruins around it look modern by comparison. The trunk radiates hardness, a strength from deformation, like the sinewy limbs of a laborer whose muscles are held in constant tension, until they can no longer know suppleness. Seekers of shade and enlightenment once sought its shadow, but now it can only offer a good example. leafless tree -- sitting in the temple yard, luring Buddhas
