Forbidden City

I like the murals at the bottom.
Theres something about these colored long columns.

For the king

An Ivory chair
Art has matched royalty.

Sculpture present in physical space unlike an idea hidden in books

Poetry

The want of writing a better poem
makes me read higher works of literature

Growing up

Al Jaffee thinks like and adolescent.

Writing fiction

I told my roomate that I was going to read Beirut 39. She asked me if its fiction. That put me in a thought if its possible to write fiction when you are in the midst of turmoil or insecurity.

Who am I?

I crawl on my belly at a snail pace
But I have no carapace

I have a foot and no bones
But I make no bones about it

My movements are smooth on slime
But I stop in my tracks on gas lime.

Translating geography

I heard a man proposed in Antarctica.
What is the Antarctica, the Everest of the mind?

Understanding the east and west

Somebody else's century

Hope forever

Whether it be the Berlin Wall, apartheid, the bad old coercive Soviet system, or our own bad old coercive business systems, it seems that any foundations not now built on the realities of human relationship are being swept away by the forces of our time. - Crossing the Unknown sea, David Whyte.

Standing the test of time or falling under.

Restrictions

.. but even during Lithuania's relatively benign interregnum golden period, quotas limied the number of Jews who could practice law. - Al Jaffee, Mad Life

The illustrations in this book are unique with all the mischievous acts that the author was upto as a child.

Kaunas
Prognathic
Keds

Lithuanian Lapta is similar to Indian Gulli danda

How did you view adults in your childhood? Al Jaffee was anti adults.

Fish pond

.. the powers that be decided to poison the pond so that they could get rid of pickerel and bass and horned pout and turtles and stock it with trout. - Mark Vonnegut, Just like someone without mental illness only more so

one question that all adults like to ask kids , 'What will you be when you grow up?'. Mark's 'I should have been a doctor' at 25 from his 9-10 yr old self, made him a doctor.

Once Mark Vonnegut brought home RSV. Contagion does not fear doctor. Therese J. Borchard calls the playroom as 'pink-eye pit' in her memoir Beyond Blue

I talked with Lincoln and Twain
and Dostoyevsky and played
saxophone with Coltrane.
- Mark Vonnegut.

Tree of Hippocrates at harvard from a sapling from Kos.

First do no harm
- Hippocrates
Applies to engineers too. Dont break things while fixing broken stuff.

Art

Netsuke in The hare with amber eyes
The family tree spanning two sides of the page is scary. It begins in Japan. Then theres a map of Paris.

Flaneur

Warm courts in Florida

is how Monica feels nostalgia for the playground in Getting a grip

Novi Sad
pipsqueak

On the placid pond

we saw the breath
of geese take form

Does a North rough winged swallow
feel the loss of a feather or two

As the bird whizzes from one end
of the steps to the other, on the bank

does it recognise the feather sailing
like a dart due to reflection

does it feel the loss as much as that
of a flying insect that escapes it

does it feel like the loss of a
toe-nail or an eyelash?

Two owls drop me an insect
when I look at them


How do the birds detect insects?
What is the insects defense?
Crickets are chirping away in India
Is it getting hot?