An astonishing event for artists and residents of Sonoma (who generously provide rooms for artists roaming around the valley painting). Check out the blogs of Bill Cone, Terry Miura, Robin Purcell, Paul Kratter, Randy Sexton, Carol Hesse-Low, and Tim Horn.
Ballad of the Army Carts
Wagons rattling, banging,
horses neighing, snorting,
draftees marching, bows arrows at hips,
fathers, mothers,
wives, children,
run to say goodbye —
kick up so much dust you can’t see Xian-yang Bridge!
Families pull at clothes,
feet stamp in anger!
Block the way — shrieking!
Despair raises tears to heaven, there is no need to pray
I walk alongside the column. I ask, “What is happening??”
A soldier shrugs, “This happens all the time
from age fifteen they are sent to guard the North,
at forty they garrison the West
When leaving home the village elder wraps their turbans,
when returning home their hair is white
Frontiers flood with blood oceans
War loving emperors dream of conquests forever
Haven’t they head, in Han, east of the mountains,
there are two hundred prefectures, thousands upon thousands of villages
growing nothing but thorns?
Even where strong wives handle hoe and plough,
crops grow chaotically, fields are disasters
It’s harvers for men of Quin, they’re such good fighters
they’re driven from battle to battle like dogs, chickens
Even though you were kind enough to ask, sir,
perhaps I shouldn’t complain, as a soldier
Take this winter,
Shanxi troops were never sent home.
Their tax collectors are demanding land taxes though — land fees!
Where is that money supposed to come from?!?
A son is born to be killed
Have you seen the shores of Kokonor?
White bones lie in drifts, uncollected
New ghosts moan,
old ghosts cry
Under lowering clouds their voices scream in rain.
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/thumbs-up/thumbs-up-season-1-1-of-5
Online Hitch-hiking Community (don’t do this by yourself…jumping even slow moving freight-trains is extraordinarily dangerous; pros get on at the back, they never climb aboard even gradually moving walking-pace trains. What happens is: when you begin to lift yourself into a boxcar your legs swing under the carriage, leaving half of your body hanging over the tracks with nothing to push your feet off of…you hang there for maybe even several hours before dropping to be cut in half across the rails. Don’t jump on slow moving trains; only get on stopped trains, travel with friends.)
This is my favorite poem by far, written during the 1150s in Kashmir by a poet named Ksemendra:
Poets should learn with their eyes
the forms of leaves.
They should know how to make people laugh
when all are together.
They should get to see what people are really like.
They should know about oceans and mountains
in themselves,
and the sun and the moon and the stars.
Their minds should enter into the seasons.
They should go among many people in many places,
and learn their languages.
My own small light-weight backpack named Henrietta…she usually carries little more than a pair of convertible short/long-pants, a shirt, a lot of socks, tooth brush/toothpaste, and books found and traded along the way. We travel very, very, verrrrry fast. Overnight trains and night-busses are a way to meet locals and move quickly over long distances. (Henrietta is Canadian, I am not…she thought the flag would be a good idea after the start of the Iraq war but most people overseas are extremely welcoming so it has not proven necessary…and…most foreigners think Canada is part of America anyway, as in: “Canada? Oh! New York City!”
This FREE little app has saved weeks of my life. When working in Photoshop you may notice your computer slowing down. Hit iFreeMem, step away for a minute, then return to a refreshed, invigorated computer. Open up ‘Activity Monitor’ (on a Mac) to see how much free memory has been created. This is the best little program I use. Lifesaver. From their website:
If you are in the middle of using an application and the system becomes unresponsive for several seconds it could be the memory manager recovering cache memory for your application.
iFreeMem optimise feature is a quick and easy alternative to either a reboot or RAM upgrade to get defragmented free memory.
