liquid hours poured forth,
rolling over rock
& into the sea.
Liquid Hours [Free Verse]
2
DAILY PHOTO: Stone Art at Ambedkar Gate, Lucknow
Winter Song [Haiku]
dry leaf rattle:
shaken by a steady breeze:
Winter song.
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PROMPT: Positive Change
Daily practice of feeling gratitude. (As opposed to being grateful that one November day a year and wallowing in how horrible everything is the other three-sixty-four.)
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“Crops” by Walter de la Mare [w/ Audio]
Farmer Giles has cut his rye;
Oh my! Oh my!
Farmer Bates has cut his wheat;
Och, the thieving hares in it!
Farmer Turvey's cut his barley;
Ripe and early, ripe and early.
And where day breaks, rousing not,
Farmer Weary's cut his throat.
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Music Mind [Free Verse]
a meandering melody
hijacked my bliss track
and, as I drifted in the void,
my spine straightened,
my breath slowed,
and I tumbled -- for a time --
through eternity.
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DAILY PHOTO: Sikandar Bagh, Lucknow
BOOKS: “The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction” by Richard Curt Kraus
The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction by Richard Curt KrausMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher Site – OUP
The decade-long Cultural Revolution in China is generally looked upon as a bleak time and place to be alive. This brief guide reflects on the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of Mao’s attempt to root out capitalist and middle-class influence from Chinese society. The book also reflects upon other events in China during the period (e.g. detente) and how they related to the Cultural Revolution. It also explores how China came out of the Cultural Revolution.
The author makes efforts to be diplomatic and evenhanded about the event. Some readers will find this beneficial to their purposes and may even see the occasional glimmer of a bright side to a dismal period in human history. However, one should not expect to gain any visceral insight into the sadness and chaos of the era. While there was discussion of not only the end of the Cultural Revolution but what China’s continued path looked like, it didn’t get much into whether there was a long shadow to the revolution and what that shadow might look like.
I found the book informative though there were dimensions into which I would have liked to gain more insight (e.g. it doesn’t go much into the influence on religion, nor on more peripheral arts,) but that’s the challenge of such a concise guide. Also, the author is of a political science background, and this informs what elements are given more or less discussion.
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“Down to Jiangling” [下江陵] by Li Bai [李 白]
I left Baidi amid ochre clouds --
Crossed a thousand li by day's end.
Monkeys howled and chased along each bank;
My skiff slipped past ten thousand mountains.
The original in Simplified Chinese:
朝辞白帝彩云间
千里江陵一日还
两岸猿声啼不住
轻舟已过万重山
Note: this is poem #269 of the 300 Tang Poems [唐詩三百首.]
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PROMPT: Fun… Exercise
In the Flow.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 