Gypsy Ash

Greetings,

Welcome to Earth.

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. It is a spinning rock with a core, mantle and crust. It is cold in the winter and hot in the summer. It's round, wet and crowded. Fortunate humans maybe live 100 years. A blink of the eye. 

The core is 1,800 miles below the surface. It is a dense ball of iron and nickel. The inner core temperature is 6700F. The inner core is 750 miles thick.

The outer core is 1,370 miles thick.

The mantle is above the core. The mantle is 1,800 miles thick.
The crust is 3.14 or apple Pi. Or as a statistical genius said, 'there are lies, damn lies and statistics.'

Deep inside the core fire burns through levels of shifting Teutonic plates, shuddering massive pressure, blathering hot embers, fumes, mixing gases, molten silica, and impatient promiscuous sulphuric acids.

This natural evolutionary pressure creates a gigantic orgasm, spewing, releasing, exploding, melting, through the mantle to the crust, surface and into the atmosphere. My volcano blasts ash and cinder and molten rocks the size of small projectiles into the atmosphere where it flies, floats and dances in wind. 

Nature is a gigantic, sublime, violent experiment. Nature is awesome, beautiful, terrifying and magnificent dramatic lesson in natural laws. Magma at work. Do not disturb.

Nature is a wonderful teacher. Nature informs humans in clear non-negotiable terms, 'you adapt, adjust, evolve or you die. This is natural selection.'

Simple as that. Nature says, 'unfortunately for living species, I have no agenda, flight plan, schedule, meeting, commerce, economy, plan, or boarding pass. My departure gate is the crust.

'I have a free pass. I have total power. I am unpredictable. I am violent and I am benign. I am gentle, kind and generous. I giveth and I taketh away. Humans will never completely with their severely limited intelligence control me, manipulate me or own me. I have vast powers. I create and I destroy. That's my Nature.

'Some humans call me Shiva, the Auspicious One. I am the destroyer of life. Fire is my source of power.

'Another manifestation is Mahakala, the Lord of Time.'

Humans are naturally naive. Naivety and stupidity and laziness is their Nature. They don't listen or pay attention to Nature until it, for example, shifts the plates below the Tibetan plateau causing an earthquake. The natural result is loss of life because shoddy buildings built by greedy humans all fall down.

Humans use fire to cremate bodies because there are not enough vultures to eat the remains. So it goes.

Ash, on the other hand, a buy product of Nature goes with the flow.

Metta.

A World Without Planes...read more 

Dance hall

Greetings,

The dancing hall at Preah Khan is where dancers don't smile. They dance. They are slave dancers, all the women.

They dance for the king. He is the god-king. He has resurrected his desire and fury creating new customs, new decrees for dancers. They dance for the mighty and powerful. They dance Khmer stories about war, conquest, harvests, seasons, sun, and moon. 

They are submissive dances of life/death. They dance to celebrate life. They dance the celebration of tranquility. They dance or die. They wear tinkling bands of gold around wrists and ankles. They wear diamond diademed crowns and shimmering silk clothing. They do not smile. Their faces are frozen in the trance of dance.

One dances to escape the tyranny. She's danced all her short, sweet life.

The hall of dancers is surrounded by columns, portals and broken jumbled green moss stones. Thick gnarled silk-cotton tree roots crawl toward dancers. They dance through roots, past Shiva and Vishnu. The preserver and destroyer of life. 

Two foreign dancers dance with guide books. Golden leafed pages dance past their eyes. A guide who knows everything watches them. They are blind. He dances alone.

Metta.

Phimeamakas, Preah Pithu, Thommanon, Chau Say Thevoda...

Leica the day

Greetings,

What a pleasant day. I visited four temples - there are perhaps 1,000 - at, around and away from Angkor Wat. An evolving diversion from previous impressions.

Phimeanakas, 10th c., in a large forested enclosure means "flying palace" in Sanscrit. It was topped by a golden spire. I sat near Phimeanakas and then wandered toward ancient walls. In between were painters offering their art. Green and yellow leaves fluttered through broken light. Earth's new blanket. 

The Preah Pithu Group are five Hindu and Buddhist temples from the 15th c. The forest path is crackling. I walk slow, breathing in the fragrance of leaves, trees, fresh air, leaving only footprints.

Over a simple meal of rice and vegetables a group of young Czech men talk. One said, "We have to DO everything in a short time." That sums it ALL up.

Thommanon, 12th c. is in great condition with fine Buddhist art and complements Chau Say Thevoda. Chau is undergoing renovation using Chinese government funds. Dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu.

A cleansing ceremony at Preah Palilay.

Metta.

Phimeamakas, Preah Pithu Group, Thommanon, Chau Say Thevoda galleries...

Yellow Butterfly Guide

Greetings,

Evidence of intelligent life on Earth is greatly exaggerated. It's a rumor. A myth.

I recently wandered Banteay Kdei and Ta Phrom.

Kdei is great for walking through the dust. A sun yellow butterfly was my guide. It led me around the perimeter for a feeling of perspective. Being outside gives you the feeling of space acknowledging deep green forest. I do this at every temple. It's rare to see others explore the outside. Intelligence on Earth is rare.

Tourist ants are in a highly disciplined hurry. They march in, follow others, follow the stone path. They wander around, make a lot of noise, pose for pictures and march out. Their time is limited. Many look serious and sad, especially the Europeans. They are clearly controlled by forces unknown to them. It may be a silent ticking mechanism on their wrist near a pulse. They are little robots.

I remember a Tibetan saying, "I would rather be a tiger for one day than a sheep for a thousand years."

I explored outside slowly inside gentle winds from the forest. It's a very slow walking meditation. I engaged all my senses. Thick dust underfoot is a welcome relief after stones. I am surrounded by light and shadows dancing through leaves. All nature all the time.

Butterfly leads me to interior passages and shadowed experiences. Butterfly shows me mysterious art. Deep interior space. It takes ages to reach the center. 

Prohm is where "possibly the most famous photographed tree on planet Earth exists." It entwines itself around and through soft stones. It's a zoo. Human hoards line up to take a photo. They push and shove and jostle so they can have their picture taken with this tree.

Italian, French and German tongues wag like mongrels in heat. Life is a bitch. The Japanese, as I mentioned in an earlier post from The Silk Worm Farm are total photo freaks, obsessed with posing in doorways, passages, with carvings, plants, ferns and leaves. They feel the experience with their cameras. They behave like the temples are one gigantic amusement park. 

Here's the tree. No humans. Actually there is a tiny tourist sleeping inside the third root from the center.

Banteay Kdei and Ta Phrom galleries.

Metta.

Moon, silk, kids and water

Greetings,

I've been in Cambodia one month. The year is flying by, away, intent on new and completely unknown possibilities. 

New imagination galleries on the sidebar include:  Siem Reap, Artists and Pagodas, A silk farm (included in Bamboo Monkeys Photo Blog) My Grandfather's House rural school project and a floating village Kampong Pluck, presently high and dry.

Here's a sample. Feel free to explore at your leisure.

Metta.

Boiling silkworm cocoons to extract raw yellow silk. It will be separated into soft and fine threads and dyed using natural materials: banana (yellow), Bougainvillea (yellow), almond leaves (black), lac insect nests (red and purple), prohut wood (yellow and green), lychee wood (black and gray), indigo (blue), and coconut (brown and pink). Cambodian weavers also weave Ikat, a technique creating patterns on the silk threads prior to weaving. It is called "HOL" and there are more than 200 motifs. 

Raw silk on loom. 

Kampong Pluck floating village outside Siem Reap in the dry season. The wet season is July-November and the water level will rise 9 meters, (30 feet).

 Children at My Grandfather's House, a rural elementary school supported by volunteers. It will supplement their local Khmer education. Children will begin with basic English classes. Plans include math and basic computer skills.

Inside the floating world of nature, water, and light. Be light. About it.