John Fitzpatrick. About New China, the Koreas, Myanmar, Thailand, and also about Japanese and Chinese writers and poets. The main emphasis is on North Asia and the political tectonics of this very important, powerful, and many-peopled area.
Wednesday, 1 March 2017
KO:49: REVOLUTION: revolutions, whether social or individual, once they happen, take at least two or three human lifetimes to roll out the benefits and costs. This is something hard for folk who think change happens fast. This is a very hard truth for both Americans and Australians....thus the rise of various token professions of promise, whether they be of the spiritual, the physical...or the psychological.
So, I remain without the Facebook, and that is actually a relief...too much of nothing for me...it looks like something, but it isn't anything. to me, Facebook is much what the writer Kurt Vonnegut noted as a "Grand Falloon"...what you get when you prick a balloon. but...I have turned on the blog again. I like the blog. You write things...You don't get comments or followers but rather just anonymous readers. The readership changes from country to country. This week most have been from Japan, and then England. As noted the blog is mostly about what is happening in North Asia. If I had my way, which is unlikely, I would set up home in Dalian, a giant trading city in North China, and quickly zoom over to the Koreas and Japan to keep up to date. It is such a fascinating area. It has everything...nuclear weapons, mysticism, shamanism, fusions of maoism, neo-communism, democracies, old soviet structured ideas and things, new Japanese things etc all laid one across the other...and all, unlike SE Asia, understandable if you focus. Massive concentrations of people and profoundly rich resources...and great angst.....and the sea there is so deep and cold, wow. Melbourne will do. John
Monday, 27 February 2017
one of my favourite Dylan Thomas poems...the sermon by Rev Eli Jenkins...from Under Milk Wood
Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die
And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I’m sure is always touch-and-go.
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I’m sure is always touch-and-go.
We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.
O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
Bless us all this night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
And say, good-bye – but just for now!
Sunday, 26 February 2017
The manuscript I LOVE YOU PARK is finished now after a few years...or maybe 5.
Its my attempt at distilling a day in the life in a bamboo park in China.
My writing style started off with poems, short, something like haiku but less organised, and this is what I do still prefer.
In this way I LOVE YOU PARK is made up simply of about 40 or 50 sentences...this 'distilling' as I call it is tricky because if you write something and then distil/edit it down to its core idea you can easily get to a point where the tale no longer exists.
I try to write it as if I am always haunting non-existence...just saying enough...and as the vein of it is pretty much existential, this is what I like to do with words. Just say enough.
There is so much written all the time and yet so little of something with a meaning, so I am trying for gentle meaning without too many words.
Colours of green and red in a mist with shapes coming out of that. A piece of carved graffiti saying I Love U etc...quiet stillness at the hub of a bigger more confusing world.
That's what I wish my work to be.
personally, I am experiencing a revival of belief of a kind of Jesus not as a deity so much but as a kind of wise and helpful friend...funny business this Belief Index.
My writing style started off with poems, short, something like haiku but less organised, and this is what I do still prefer.
In this way I LOVE YOU PARK is made up simply of about 40 or 50 sentences...this 'distilling' as I call it is tricky because if you write something and then distil/edit it down to its core idea you can easily get to a point where the tale no longer exists.
I try to write it as if I am always haunting non-existence...just saying enough...and as the vein of it is pretty much existential, this is what I like to do with words. Just say enough.
There is so much written all the time and yet so little of something with a meaning, so I am trying for gentle meaning without too many words.
Colours of green and red in a mist with shapes coming out of that. A piece of carved graffiti saying I Love U etc...quiet stillness at the hub of a bigger more confusing world.
That's what I wish my work to be.
personally, I am experiencing a revival of belief of a kind of Jesus not as a deity so much but as a kind of wise and helpful friend...funny business this Belief Index.
Saturday, 25 February 2017
2 quotes from Michel de Montaigne, 1540AD: 1: Marriage, marriage is like a perfect golden cage where half of the beautiful birds inside are trying so hard to get out and half of the beautiful birds outside are trying so hard to get in. 2: Marriage is like going to a market, the only thing free is the entrance.
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