Kandinsky

Fishtail Mountain, Annapurna Range, Nepal

Wassily Kandinsky, the painter, had the ability to see sound and hear color.

In 1911 he founded "The Blue Rider" school in Munich, taking abstract painting to another level. Magic.

Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction 1908-1922.

..."Synesthesia is a blend of the Greek words for together (syn) and sensation (aesthesis). The earliest recorded case comes from the Oxford academic and philosopher John Locke in 1690, who was bemused by "a studious blind man" claiming to experience the colour scarlet when he heard the sound of a trumpet."

..."If Kandinsky had a favourite colour, it must have been blue: "The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural… The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white."

..."Despite his theories that the universe was in thrall to supernatural vibrations, auras and "thought-forms", many of which came from arcane, quasi-religious movements such as theosophy, Kandinsky's belief in the emotional potential of art is still convincing today. Our response to his work should mirror our appreciation of music and should come from within, not from its likenesses to the visible world: "Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings."

Ice Man

Diamond Sutra

“So you should view this fleeting world –

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”

– Diamond Sutra

Nepal

Fabulous Fables

The world is a myth. We live in a fable.

I used to be someone else but I traded him in.

Traveling isn't supposed to be fun, said an American father to his whining son sitting on a cafe balcony in Istanbul overlooking the Bosporus, it's an adventure.

I don't find. I discover.

Mai's hearing evaluation.

Anthony from NZ came, met, talked, promised, took her out, tried to seduce her, failed, left. Mai is resigned to her former life, massage and laundry scrubbing under the paternal gaze of her older sister who sits in perpetual admiration of her mirrored reflection.

How does her awareness and disappointment register in her POTENTIAL for unrealized dreams?

How does her silent resignation and understanding comprehend lost chance, all the complexity w/o expectations?

In the false dream of star rain they moved a wooden toy pawn,
the salad bar in silence welcomed cool air from a brown river,
children pressed noses to a rolling window, laughing.

An archeologist skips through star puddles into Angkor Wat excavations.

Freedom sings stones,
selling a Blue Pumpkin to a Cambodian land mine amputee w/o a left leg
selling DVDs to fat tourists talking with their mouths full.

An Enfield spinning the Wheel of Time, rejoicing in small miracles rumbles in Pokhara, Nepal.

Sit in meditation.  

We do laundry by machine, said Language Animal.

3.8 billion years ago a black hole captured a star the size of our sun. It sucked the star into its empty mass. The star exploded the black hole. The escaping energy created streams of light we see today.

At that moment 20 raindrops trusted intuition.

To travel is to feel.

Indonesia asked you to return. You said thank you, farewell. Hello Hanoi.

Orchids remember you. The apple tree you planted at Gardenia is growing. Roots buried deep below blossoms lie fragrant with memory.

In and out dialogue.

Discover what speaks to you.

Get to school fool

Get to school fool: the Turkish TEOL Push Them Through Language Skool was, how do you say depressing oh my yes students on hard luck streets among Roman ruins showed him, illuminated him into their sadness and loss. Serious big time long lost time depressed.

Theydontknowwhatheydontknow or carets ate all.

According to history’s short story 10,000 Greek warriors escaping starvation and being pursued by Persian hoards ran down Trabzon mountains yelling, The Sea! The Sea!

They built Sumela Monastery in 386 A.D. on a remote mountain cliff at 3,900 feet facing the Altindere valley. Orthopedic Greek monks painted alfresco du jour stories with Apostles. Emperors came and went. Ignorant 20th century tourists defaced faces with pens, trowels, keys and bleeding fingers. Erase the past, yelled Turkish Authority taking a page out of Chinese and Khmer revisionist plans.  

Green and yellow forests, high rocky peaks and gorges inhaled fresh mountain air. Dirt paths escaping civilization’s eternal chaos forded deep rushing rivers climbing through autumn leaves hearing crescendos of water music singing, Pilgrimage. Up. 

OLD BOOTS

Creativity is a verb.

He accepted Z’s advice on not trying to be perfect. Don’t try. DO. He remembered her counsel. You will abandon this beautiful mess.

In Trabzon, he discovered new Merrell hiking boots for 112 bones to replace three-year old Hanoi relics. Soft slow in-step and out-step. Stepping is freedom.

Walking makes the road.

Timeworn boots remembered Hanoi alleys, Sapa Mountains, 101st Screaming Eagles wandering Hue with ghosts, Saigon pagodas,

Angkor Wat temples, faded colonial yellow buildings near a corroding Kampot iron bridge,

Battenbang genocide survivor stories, serene Luang Prabang monks receiving alms before dawn on winter mornings, Nam Ou river songs in Laos,

Phongsali tribal dialects, Pakse cotton threads, sacred Banlung animist jungles, Siem Reap lovers,

Nepalese villages below Annapurna, Boudhanath circumambulations, Vientiane genius kids developing social intelligence and character with curious laughter and Trabzon hospitality.

At Sumela boots built for comfort not for speed explored terra firma. Then he strolled along the Black Sea to Giresun.

The Language Company

Bhaktapur, Nepal

Wander Free