DAILY PHOTO: New Market, Kolkata
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The Frog by Hilaire Belloc [w/ Audio]
Be kind and tender to the Frog, And do not call him names, As 'Slimy skin,' or 'Polly-wog,' Or likewise 'Ugly James,' Or 'Gape-a-grin, or 'Toad-gone-wrong,' Or 'Billy Bandy-knees': The Frog is justly sensitive To epithets like these. No animal will more repay A treatment kind and fair; At least so lonely people say Who keep a frog (and, by the way, They are extremely rare).
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PROMPT: Live Anywhere
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
First of all, I’d say that I probably could live most places in the world, and the few I couldn’t (e.g. North Korea) have no appeal to me as a place of residence. Having lived several places in the US, a couple years in England, and now over ten years in India, I’m under no illusions that there is a Shangri-la out there, a perfect utopia. Most places are fine places to live if one is flexible-minded and can adapt to that place’s rhythms and peculiarities. There may be a honeymoon period during which some place seems better than the rest, but even the most seemingly idyllic place will lose its luster in time.
That’s why I recommend travel. Everyplace offers beauty and life lessons when taken in bite-size pieces.
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Two-Tier World [Haiku]
the foggy valley looks like a depthless painting through fall foliage.
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DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from Diwali 2023, Bangalore
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263) by Emily Dickinson [w/ Audio]
Tell all the truth but tell it slant -- Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind --
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BOOKS: The Understory by Saneh Sangsuk
The Understory by Saneh SangsukMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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An elderly monk tells stories from his life to the kids living in a small [and fictitious] Thai village. This is one of those works of literary fiction that you have to give a chance. The pacing, the subject matter, and the approach of the first part of the book is such that anyone without an intense interest in Thai village life or the thoughts of a Thai monk on the state of Buddhism in India (almost non-existent) will find it a bit of a slog. However, as the story shifts to the young man’s (pre-monk) life, adolescence through life as a newly married man expecting his first child, it becomes an intensely gripping story.
In the early parts, there’s a lot of violation of that old chestnut, “show, don’t tell” and — like much literary fiction — it’s not clear that there will be a story (versus exposition, character development, and description of events of a non-story like nature.) However, this transitions into the evocative story of how the narrator came to be a monk after a tragic farming householder experience. I can’t even give an accurate description of how far in I think the book makes this swing because my reading pace in the second part was so much quicker and more compelled than early on.
The book has hints of supernatural elements in it but can be read as realism in an environment of intense superstition.
I’d highly recommend this book for those who enjoy literature in translation. Give it a chance to win you over. It will, soon enough.
View all my reviews
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PROMPT: Finders Keepers
What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept?)
I once found a $100 bill by the curb on a rundown street that was about half abandoned buildings. I assumed it had been dropped by a drug dealer because not a lot of other people in that neighborhood had $100 bills in quantities such that they could cascade out of their pockets without notice. And there weren’t a lot of people hanging out in that particular area that weren’t up to something. But I didn’t keep it so much as spend it. I’m not much of a stuff collector, and I early learned that cool rocks and shells and such belong where they are and I take pictures, not souvenirs.
My father was a farmer. He, on rare occasion over decades of farming, turned up something interesting in the act of turning the soil (e.g. a mastodon tooth and some decomposing metal antiques.)
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Fall Tenacity [Haiku]
dry and yellow, fall leaves hang on like a thick head of gray hair.
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Ariel’s Song by William Shakespeare [from The Tempest]
Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange:
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell.
Ding-dong!
Hark! Now I hear them,
Ding-dong, bell!
NOTE: From The Tempest Act 1: Scene 2
Tiger Riding for Beginners 