Revisting Shinmachi

The next installment of the Kyoto Streets series, at Deep Kyoto:

http://www.deepkyoto.com/revisiting-shinmachi/



On the turntable:  Jerry Reed, "Smokey & The Bandit (Sdtk)"

Imbibling Bibliophile #93

Garcia:A Signpost to New Space by Charles A. Reich
   Liberty Ale, Anchor Brewing

On the turntable: Human League, "Original Remixes & Rarities"

(untitled)

Flickering warmth
Helps stave off up to
12 centuries of cold.

On the turntable:  The Charlatans, "Return of the Great Contenders"
 

Sunday Papers: W. Somerset Maugham

"To know a foreign country at all you must not only have lived in it and in your own, but also lived in at least one other."


On the turntable: Bill Evans Trio, "Consecration"

(untitled)

Trees speak of autumn.
But winter too has a voice,
Whispered on a slate grey sea.

On the turntable:  The Charlatans, "North Country Boy"

Imbibling Bibliophile #92

Peter Fleming: A Biography by Duff Hart-Davis
   Shizuku Junmai Daiginjo, Gozenshu Brewery

On the turntable:  Linda Ronstadt, "Frenesi"

 

(untitled)

Under autumn’s perfection,
My feet follow the ancient road,
Bound-up in concrete.

On the turntable: Jerry Reed, "Texas Bound & Flying"

Sunday Papers: Thelonious Monk

"Everyone is a genius just being themself"

On the turntable: Jerry Garcia Band,  "Pure Jerry, Lunt-Fontanne, New York City"

Imbibling Bibliophile #91

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

  Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Boston Beer Company

On the turntable:  Icehouse, "White Heat"

(untitled)

 Against the deep purple 

Of crépuscule skies,

exaggerating leaves.

On the turntable:  Jackson Browne, "I'm Alive"

Sunday Papers: Stefan Zweig

"If today, thinking it over calmly, we wonder why Europe went to war in 1914, there is not one sensible reason to be found, nor even any real occasion for the war.  There were no ideas involved, it was not really about drawing minor borderlines; I can explain it only, thinking of that excess of power, by seeing it as a tragic consequence of the internal dynamism that had built up during those forty years of peace. and now demanded release.  Every state suddenly felt that it was strong, and forgot that other states felt exactly the same; all states wanted even more, and wanted some of what the others already had.  The worst of it was that the very thing we loved most, our common optimism, betrayed us, for everyone thought that everyone else would back down at the last minute, and so the diplomats began their game of mutual bluff." 

On the turntable: Bruce Hornsby, "Intersections"
 

On the Karakorum: The Hunza

Wild Frontiers Adventure Travel posted a piece of mine on their blog, based upon a trip I took with their company:

On the Karakorum...

Edward J. Taylor travelled with us on our Kashgar to Kashmir Karakorum Adventure recently and wrote a series of blogs documenting his epic journey.

 In the beautiful Hunza valley in Pakistan, believed by many to be the setting for the mythical Shangri-la, Edward relishes in the local hospitality and ponders religious intolerance in remembrance of slain prophets...

Click the link to read more...


On the turntable: Joe Jackson, "Night and Day II"

(untited)

After leading me to the mountain path,
My 102-year old guide
Prepares the garden for autumn.

On the turntable;  Joe Jackson, "Night and Day"

(untitled)

Under a stone Buddhas sixth century gaze,
The temple’s lunch bell
Rings from a microwave.

On the turntable:  Linda Ronstadt, "Live at Budokan 1979"

Sunday Papers: Dennis McNally

Following close behind survival and procreation, the pursuit of spiritual transcendence seems to be a universal human need.  The three-hundredths-of-a-second neural gap between reality and our apprehension of it dooms us to see our lives in images forever newly obsolete and to grasp only the tiniest fraction of what is available. It is the chasm that Plato described as the difference between shadow and fact.  The methods chosen for the pursuit, from the Roman Catholic mass to whatever the Dionysians used to the captures of southern Pentecostalists induced by gospel music to LSD-25, are merely a matter of cultural taste.


On the turntable:  Jean-Luc Ponty, "Live at Donte's"
On the nighttable:  Jon Krakauer, "Into the Wild"

(untitled)

Along the nine-fold path,
Autumn displays with deepening color, 

The doctrine of Right Effort.

On the turntable: Cocteau Twins, "Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, March 29, 1991"