31 jan 06

MK12 is up for your listening pleasure. A quick word on the chaotic Chinese New Year travel reality. 144 million humans pushing and shoving their collective way through bus and train stations trying to get somewhere to be with family and friends so they can turn around this week and do it in reverse. That's like the entire population of Bangladesh.

Our audio offering also includes a memoir excerpt; seeing 25,000 year old Paleolithic cave paintings in Spain. One of those life changing experiences. Filled with wonder. Peace.

29 jan 06

Greetings,
New Year celebrations are well underway - fireworks, flaming balls of glowing red, yellow, white and green tracers light up the sky. Strings of firecrackers blast silence to kingdom come. Ghosts fly away welcoming the year of the dog.

Speaking of explosions, here's a link to an LA Times article by Josh Meyer on the Predator drones used for surveillance and killing. A fascinating glimpse into the murky world of high altitude buzzing high tech armed with Hellfire missiles. Zoom, zip zap. Collateral death is parsed into oblivion.

LA Times - Predator Drones

22 Jan 06

Cold winds whip through mountain passes and across the lake these days. Clouds hide peaks. Rode over to the market town for supplies and made some images. They are posted in January 2006 gallery. Creative experimentation led to the one here, a floating feeling. Prehistoric life forms. Enjoy.

17 Jan 06

There is no chance, no way this little writer will ever bring his mom for moral support under the big glaring lights of a TV talk show to explain, apologize, and justify his creative licence to embellish his memoir.

Literary agents, publishers and their marketing whiz kids need a hook. They need emotional leverage and pathos to sell the thing. The book. The story.

It's all true and "The Rejection Letter," in MK 11 says so. If it ain't on the page it ain't on the stage.

**

We increased the size of image gallery thumbnails. New street stuff posted in January 06.

**

In other exciting news the kite we recently purchased for 18Y ($2.2) - a green and orange fighter jet has taken off. The soccer field is ideal for catching a breeze off the lake.

We scoured the city and tracked it down at a toy and sundries wholesaler on a grimy, crowded alley. The girl showed us an outdoor bin full of broken dirty kites and we requested a newer version. She went inside the store grabbed some keys and led us to an elevator shaft. We went to the 7th floor. Broken shards of cement and dirt covered the ground. Busy workers pushed trolleys of razor blades and cosmetics from storage units to elevators destined for shelves.

She led me down a cement hallway and unlocked a door. The long narrow room was packed with boxes overflowing with Christmas decorations, products and debris. She foraged through a mess of stuff and unearthed a box with long colorful day-glow neon cylinders. Bags of kites. We open a green one, dumped it out and unrolled it on the floor. Four feet across with two slender steel pieces for wings and stability. Perfect. Found a wooden roller with string wrapped around a red spiral, paid and wandered away.

We have lift off. Go fly a kite.

14 Jan 06

Greetings from the sunny, warm semi-tropical peaceful zone of spontaneous joy.

The university is quiet, all the students bailed out the last two days, heading home for spring festival. They dragged their bags and pulled rickety overloaded little luggage carts on trembling wheels toward black cars, SUV's and local minibuses for the long trek to their own beds, friends and family.

All the student shops, restaurants and school gates are locked. There are two ways I bike to the small town for supplies. One is a paved road filled with motorcycles and trucks. Blaring impatient horns. My preference is a dirt trail around the mountain temple, changing leaves, overlooking villages where women in red head scarves work the soil and haul water in black buckets suspended on bamboo poles.

Fields bloom with luscious green vegetables. Chickens prowl through trash along the road. Encroaching on fields, yellow bulldozers chop into hills removing heavy red clay, dumping dirt into old trucks. They haul it away. People move mountains here.

I recently took the local bus to the big town. Before boarding I took a leak down the hill behind a crude bamboo fence and, on the way back up through rocky terrain, unknowingly stepped in a pile of shit. I got on the magic bus and quickly picked up the scent. I jumped off and scrambled through rocks and dirt trying to erase the past. O my.

The poor ticket taker girl used a piece of a cardboard to collect dirt and spread it on bus steps. Her broom swept away. Crevices picked up just enough to make the one hour journey memorable as locals discussed the stupid foreign guy and fragrance. Miles of odorous delight.

The nose knows.