Greetings,
The Secrets of the Silk Road...NYT...read more...
2,000 years ago. 4,000 miles connecting China and the West. Raw materials, goods, inventions, religions, languages, cultures, ideas.
The Penn Museum has a fine exhibit with maps, stories and images. Explore. Penn Museum...
Metta.
Greetings,
weave me a silk tie to economic terror
corruption, greed, illusions
goldman on sack-cloth bespoke tailor
mr. goldman uses asian foreign workers in the middle eats
to smuggle gold out
rag and bone merchants chant profit buy low sell high
insider trading cards i buy you buy we buy inflate the price
legalized tender is the night running gold, drugs, weapons, passports, people
all the camels, donkeys, mules running trade routes
money is the enabler
the game is over they told greece
goodbye athens goodbye ottomans goodbye nazis goodbye easy government money goodbye eu(poria)
sell me a white sand island
here comes the money honey
circumvent the corrupt banking industry
so i can file a be spoke suit tailored
by pure fabrication
woven on historical looms
lucky bamboo said i’d find you here
fit to be tied to anything
where spirit is good
matter is a matter of objective consciousness
spinning on its axis
unraveling threads
into patterns, endless knot
undertime, overtime, inside time's beauty
sharing information with intelligence agencies
now - yesterday, today, tomorrow
now a days - last decade, this decade, next decade
the long now - 20,000 years
let me introduce myself
married to consumption
my name is fear
fear of poverty
an acronym
consolation
my timid friends say it indicates
Fuck Everything And Runaway
the bigger the fear the bigger the defense
one does not need a compass in the land of dreams
Face Everything And Recover
the bigger the obstacle the bigger the joy
read ‘operating instructions for plants’
growth flow initiation
dispense resistance
correct motives, means
patience generosity
inside the people's labyrinth
honor receptive side of warrior nature light
complex adaptive system
tendency for increased complexity
make the wrong decision for the right reason
sublime paradox
it was love & passion that made us suffer
it’s not so much that there is something strange about time
the thing that’s strange is what’s going on inside time
we will understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is
fate gives you two choices, the one you should take and the one you take
Metta.
Greetings,
As hostage travelers get a grip and get a life discovering the diverse thrills of living in airports, bus and train stations along life's tortuous path Ash flies merrily along, singing a song, Blow Wind Blow.
Humans are learning how to mill around. They are learning how to adapt, adjust and evolve in situations and consequences outside their control. Many practice meditation. They know that suffering is an illusion. They make new international friends in transportation hubs. They learn how to share. Some are grateful. They get married, have kids, get divorced and attend correspondence schools in transit lounges. Some mature. A few are beginning to understand that air travel is not so exciting. After all.
The soul travels at the speed of a camel. Walking is the way.
Such a terrible hard unpleasant fact. Life goes on. Nature loves the drama. Especially at the expense of humans.
Comments from the ground echo through thin atmosphere. Ash is all ears.
It's a crying shame how Nature does this to us.
It's all about money and greed, citing airline, hotel and food suppliers. It's about supply and demand. It's about taking advantage of the situation. It's about PROFIT.
People scream, "I hate the government." People cry, "I want my government to save me, to get me home, to get me out of this horrible mess."
Artists slow down and create masterpieces.
Sue Iceland.
Throw all the bankers into the volcano.
Sam, an African farmer from Kenya believe it, drinks a Bloody Merry in Asia and yaks on his cell phone to friends about his boat and how difficult it is here to live and get decent food and how he's not REALLY interested in the 19-year old bar girls.
He is surrounded by smelly containers filled with rotting fruit and wilting flowers destined for white rich folks in Europa, a brand of Confusion. He leaves messages on answering machines. He orders another bloody drink.
Old frail Sam wobbles away on thin legs thinking, "I don't get home until the 3rd. I'm going to die before I see my boat."
He's one of those terribly sad rich men reading the fine print, NO EXIT. Lost and alone he strums his sad guitar. "I look at the world and see it is sleeping while my guitar gently weeps." Ash understands with empathy. Empathy is a circle.
The reality on the ground is that international travelers are not starving. They are not homeless. They are not begging in the streets. They are not whining, sniveling idiots. No. They are learning a hard fast lesson about the vagaries of travel. They are learning why it is important to always have a supply of energy bars and a towel.
Lost and alone in a vast empty Departure area is a little girl in a white dress. She wears bright red shoes. She clicks her heels together three times and says, "I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home."
Fly the friendly skies. They call it ADVENTURE TRAVEL.
Metta.
Greetings,
Mr. Math took a month off from teaching in Germany. Well traveled. He had much to say.
Austrians have 17 paid government holidays, the most in Europe. By the time you add on extra vacation days they, along with other European countries have almost two months off a year.
I read Marx. It's a fine idea but pure Communism won't work for probably a couple a hundred years. Hitler's longest speech was 23 minutes, he knew the value of propaganda and marketing. Keep it simple and short.
The problem scientists face is trying to find the missing link between Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
Other people consider Germans to be too blunt. We like to get to the point. American's say things like, 'This part is good but we need to consider x,' because they don't want to appear too confrontational. It's the politically correct way for them. The Japanese just say, 'We'll consider it. This means no.'
Germans are efficient when it comes to work. This why we have a strong economy. Other countries may not like it, so they find something about the system to criticise. It was like Bush talking about 'Old Europe.'
When Colin Powell addressed the U.N. about weapons of mass destruction our Foreign Minister told him, 'We don't believe you.'
When you think about it, it's amazing what the Spanish and Portuguese explorers did by sheer will alone. It's like the Chinese. They needed an irrigation system deep in the country. What did they do? They carved a mountain in half to divert water south. They did what they needed to do. Sheer will power.
Once when I was in Australia I talked with an Aborigine chief. He said, 'People only think the English were brutal against the indigenous people here. We had many inter-tribal massacres. We were busy fighting and killing each other. And, had we been in a stronger position we'd have done the same thing to the English.'
Once when I was in America I met a man in St. Paul. When I told him I was from Germany he asked me, 'Do they have cars there?' He wasn't joking. No, I said. We have donkeys.
And? Be calm. Keep and open mind. See what happens.
Metta.
Greetings,
The title comes from "Travels With Herodotus," by Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish journalist, poet, photographer and travel writer. Herodotus wrote, "The Histories," 2,500 years ago. Ryszard is a student in Poland. It is a repressive time. Stalin is in power.
He writes, "My route sometimes took me to villages along the border. But this happened infrequently. For the closer one got to the border, the emptier the land and the fewer people one encountered. This emptiness increased the mystery of these regions. I was struck, too, by how silent the border zone was. This mystery and quiet attracted and intrigued me.
"I was tempted to see what lay beyond, on the other side. I wondered what one experiences when one crosses the border. What does one feel? What does one think? It must be a moment of great emotion, agitation, tension. What is it like, on the other side?...I wanted one thing only - the moment, the act, the simple fact of crossing the border. To cross it and come right back - that, I thought, would be entirely sufficient, would satisfy my quite inexplicable yet acute psychological hunger."
Ryszard worked as a journalist for the Polish Press Agency. He wants to go abroad. A year passes. It is 1964. One day his editor-in-chief tells him, "You're going to India." He is astonished. He panics. He knows nothing about India. She gives him a thick book with a stiff cover of yellow cloth, "Here, a present for the road."
It was "The Histories," by Herodotus.
For the next ten years he is responsible for fifty countries. He reports on wars, coups and revolutions in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. When he returns to Poland he has lived through twenty-seven revolutions and coups, been jailed 40 times and survived four death sentences.
Two more excellent reads by him are: The Shadow of the Sun about Africa and Imperium about Russia. They're listed on Turn The Page, Amazon resource for your reference.
The mystical and transcendent act. Crossing the border.
Metta.
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