05.12.2021 | tm leonard "At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mysteries of life itself. At 100 I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110 everything I create, a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before." - Hokusai (1760-1849) The Great Wave
Funeral to pagoda ...
05.7.2021 | tm leonard Leica Fotographie International (LFI) selected one of my images for their KIDS gallery.
Thanks to them and here she is. Happy, strong and brave. It's good to be alive.
05.6.2021 | tm leonard Learn. Play. Share.
500 grade 10-11 students live at the school. They’ve come from distant Shan state villages and Myanmar areas. They are their parents’ social security.
The school has an excellent reputation for matriculation results.
Segregated classes. Walking on campus, girls shield their faces from distant boys. No social testosterone distractions. Zero gadgets.
They study Burmese, math, history, physics, chemistry, science, biology and Magic and Potions from 6-11, 1:30-6, 7:30-11 p.m. Sonorous voices echo daily.
They leave school one day a month. Don't let school interfere with your education.
The Wild West Village - 2.5 hours south of Mandalay - pop 10,000
Horse drawn cart traps.
One traffic light. Two motorcycles is a jam.
Green for go.
Twenty minutes away on foot, an extensive traditional market covered in rusting PSP sheets is a delightful adventure - returning to the source of community, dark-eyed local curiosity, street photography, laughter, and a floating babble of tongues inside a labyrinth of narrow uneven dirt paths.
Footprints on stone and dirt meander through forests and mountains of oranges, apples, bananas, red chilies, green vegetables, thin bamboo baskets of garlic and onions, farm implements, varieties of rice, clacking sewing machines, basic commodities, steaming noodles, cracking fires, snorting horses.
Sublime.
Blindfish heads whisper The Sea, The Sea. Silver scales reflect light.
A woman hacks chickens. Blood streams down circular wooden tree rings.
The gravity of thinking sits on a suspended handheld iron pan scale.
A white feather sits in the other pan. Balance.
Twenty-six varieties of rice mountains peak in round metal containers or scarred wooden boxes.
Horse drawn cart traps unload people and produce. Neck bells tinkle: Star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might get the wish I wish tonight. Well. Fed horses paw dirt.
Ancient diesel tractor engines attached to a steel carcass hauling people and produce bellow black smoke.
Old wooden shuttered shops with deep dark interiors display consumables, soap, thread waiting for a conversation, stoic curious dark eyed women, others laughing at the benign crazy traveler.
A happy ghost-self sits in meditative silence, absorbing rainbow sights, sounds, colors, smells, feeling a calm abiding joy.
05.1.2021 | tm leonard “Those who dance are considered insane by those who can’t hear the music.”
*
A church bell tolled four. I paused writing in mid-sentence, threw on a jacket, locked Moorish doors and walked down a cobblestone alley.
A black Mercedes hearse covered with flowers waited outside a small church. Pueblo men stood with friends across the street. The bell was all. Black mourners escaped religion. Women and children scattered home.
Six men carried out a simple brown wooden casket.
He was forty and single.
They fed the hearse.
The bell ceased.
Flashing red lights, the village Guardia led the procession down a narrow winding road. 200 men followed the hearse. They crossed a small bridge above the Rio Guadalete River and past fourteen golden Aspen trees saying farewell by waving leaves.
Solemn men passed grazing sheep, horses, wildflowers and winter orange trees. They stopped at a small white church in a grove of palm trees. Pallbearers carried the casket past a black rusty gate and into a long white crypt zone. They slid it into an empty cement slot. The parish priest whispered final prayers.
Men paid their last respects and returned to cafes for sherry, thin sliced ham, coarse bread and conversations about the man who died alone.
Laughing, singing children played soccer or skipped rope in front of the main Grazalema church in the plaza. Heavy wooden doors were locked tighter than a coffin.
ART - A Memoir
Adventure, Risk, Transformation
