Taomeow

1 hour ago, Unota said:

I find it hard to imagine how this year could be any crazier than any year before it has been. Wasn't 1964 also the year of that crazy blizzard? Or am I misremembering? There was also a crazy tornado outbreak that year, followed by the Palm Sunday one in 1965. Some reallyyy cool dual tornadoes were in the Palm Sunday one. Lots of turbulent weather.

Don't know about the blizzard, but it was the year the US had its biggest-ever earthquake -- in Alaska.  Luckily, casualties and destruction, in that sparsely populated area, were nowhere near what a 9.2 would have done in a densely populated one.  

1 hour ago, Unota said:

They do love their guns...I still have a bullet hole in one of my windows from one of my neighbors. It turns out our home insurance doesn't cover 'living near idiots.' Still don't know who it was, though.

I think some ballistics expert could determine which neighbor.  I wonder it it was possible to persuade the cops to investigate.

This is the picture a friend from long ago sent me via Classmates site with the New Year's greetings last year.  January 1st, around 4 a.m.,  a fragment of an artillery shell did this to her window, flying across the living-room and getting stuck in the opposite wall just above the sofa.  The whole family were sitting on that sofa half an hour earlier -- New Year's long night celebration -- and mercifully went to bed before it happened.  I know that building.  It used to be our office building (extremely thick-walled and imposing and sturdy, "they don't build like that anymore" kind), but later (after the fall of the Soviet Union) it was sold to some developers and turned into a luxury apartments building.  The view from this window is very familiar -- I used to look out in that direction when it was still an office building.  

This used to be a place no one could imagine ever being smack in the middle of a war.  At the time, anyone who would envision the possibility of it happening in some phantasmagoric future would have been referred to a mental institution. 

6 hours ago, thelerner said:

Chicagoans have always been partial to Capone's advice- You can get more done with a smile and kind word than with a gun.. but it's best to use both.   

Yes, there's a time for that too.   As Ecclesiastes almost pointed out, there's a time to scatter stones and a time to scatter bullets.   

BTW, you being a much nicer person than Capone (despite both of you hailing from Chicago), you remembered his advice in your own nicer way.  What he really said was this:

10 minutes ago, old3bob said:

 

so it goes for most of us in the "world" but this world is not the only reality which is what I was indirectly trying to get at...

I also hope this world is not the only reality. 

Hope is dope.  

29 minutes ago, old3bob said:

 

so when we are externally armed with guns or whatever we are more or less in some kind of or form of stress in preparation for some kind of or form of potential violence.

We are definitely "more or less in some kind of stress" -- most people are -- financial, health-related, gender/race/nationality/religion/age etc. related, political, environmental, natural and unnatural disasters, crime, family, employment/unemployment, housing, business, war and rumors of war, and so on.  I try to have an assortment of coping strategies, tools and skills more or less ready for a variety of eventualities.  People who don't feel any stress from any sources are either invincible, very lucky, very ignorant, delusional, or comfortably numb.  I'm none of the above.       

2 hours ago, Apech said:

Why do they call a fringe 'bangs'?  I wish I knew.

Same mystery as a "flat."  Why do you guys call where you live what we call a punctured tire?   

Thank you, LL.   I think part of what attracted me to taoism to begin with was this range of things they are able and willing to do based on the unified underlying theory.    

This, and a maxim by a 19th century guy (or rather a group of guys writing lapidary funnies under the pseudonym Kozma Prutkov): "A specialist is like a tooth abscess: his fullness is one-sided."   

3 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

Despite the occasional moderation dustup, this forum is mostly placid and peaceful.  Like a quiet mountain lake (or mosquito-infested bog), whole days go by with only occasional ripples, perhaps because the usual suspects are busy shooting stuff. 

I had two kids at 21, and have done more housework in my life than a team of maids and cooks (plus a full time job), and it was imperative to find yin-yang balance at some point...  Most people can find it by just not being pushed too hard by life's circumstances toward this or that extreme.  Some have to work on it though.  Besides, if there's a human type I don't particularly admire, it's a damsel in distress...  I prefer to clutch my pearls with one hand only, while wielding something more convincing with the other.        

Since time immemorial, taoist qi and yi scientists have been noticing and recording similarities between time periods that fall under similar heavenly/earthly qi configurations (despite the yi factor which introduces irregular changes into regular periodic cosmic/earthly processes.) 

The "animal" aspect of each year repeats every 12 years, but the same "animal" (type or "phase" of qi named after an "animal" for convenience of remembering and discerning its manifestations in our realm) has five wuxing  "subspecies" -- e.g. the Dragon shows up as a Water Dragon, then, twelve years later, as a Wood Dragon, another twelve years bring in the Fire Dragon, and so on.  There's not as many similarities between dragons of different wuxing phases as there are between dragons of the same phase.  And these come every 60 years (just like with every other "animal" in the cycle).  So, the year of the Wood Dragon is most likely to share its type of qi with the previous one of 60 years ago. 1964.

That was an interesting year.  If you look at the events in history -- or, for those old enough to remember, in your own childhood --  you might get a sense for what's to come. 

There were many changes.  Some were good, some bad, and some signified the beginning of an entirely new turn of events that would reverberate through ages.  In China, that was the year of the beginning of the "cultural revolution."  In the US, the year Lyndon Johnson was elected president and the war in Vietnam took a drastic turn toward escalation.  In the USSR, a KGB coup ousted Khrushchev and installed Brezhnev.  Brazil had a military coup that established a long dictatorship.  Japan, with the jaw-dropping modernity of its 1964 Tokyo Olympics facilities, made an entrance onto the world scene as a new economic superpower. The Beatles who were not getting all that much attention before their 1964 American tour became a "superpower" in their own right.  To name a few.

Buckle up folks...  

1 hour ago, moment said:

 Basho waking up.

Dawn whispers secrets of life

Ink blooms on paper.

 

Ink blooms on paper.

A dream of Japan dissolves.

California dreams.  

1 hour ago, blue eyed snake said:

 

oh yes, of course I do believe that, same here.

I do not like pics taken from me but decided to ask a friend to covertly make some pics from me. Thinking it would be nice for my child to have some pictures instead no pictures from his mom.

 

Have never analyzed why i do not like the picture thing.

 

but sometimes one can share

For me, analysis is also sort of an after-the-fact attempt to explain, but I used to avoid it way more when I was very young and truly had nothing to hide and everything to show...  and had no explanation for the disinclination.  Now I regret having almost no pictures from my teenage years.  I was amazed when I went to the 10-year anniversary of high school graduation and discovered a photo gallery of my classmates presented by one of the boys who, as it turned out, was discreetly taking pictures throughout the last school year. 

Those were great because no one was posing and the pictures were like slices of life from "back then."  A 16-year-old me was represented in many, which I never knew existed -- talking across my shoulder to someone seated behind me, biting a pencil in contemplation, in stitches over someone having just cracked a joke, and so on.  I should have asked for copies but I was still too young to care, so I never did, and soon enough every chance of getting in touch again with that boy was lost.  (By the way, he was a nephew of one of the most striking film actresses the country ever had, and in hindsight, his talent for photography may have had some family story or other behind it...  but it never occurred to me to ask.)

You're right, sometimes it's nice to share.   

For me, it's a bit about a belief many tribal people used to share -- every photo takes away some of one's soul.  An indirect confirmation that there's something to it I see in the tragic or at least controversial predicament of many (oh so many) celebrities for whom having their images on public display is part of their job description -- actors/actresses, rock stars, politicians, etc..  Many of those who had "everything" an "ordinary person" might dream of -- fame and fortune and even love of millions -- wound up dying young, screwing up their lives with all kinds of toxic excesses, getting publicly eviscerated over this or that, or becoming grotesque caricatures of their own earlier selves.  Does it have something to do with their incessant picture-posing?  I don't know, but I definitely feel a certain truth to that.

Would you believe that I only took one selfie in my entire life so far?  And even that, by accident -- I was aiming for something else and snapped a pic of my reflection in the mirror instead, in a winery.  I liked the accidental composition -- it looked sort of like a painting on the wall, so I kept it.

1 hour ago, moment said:

Look! Ryokan’s window

Silent snowflakes whisper truth

Stoic pines do endure

Stoic pines do endure

six syllables in a line

pining for Basho

42 minutes ago, Maddie said:

I've been thinking about going blonde lately.

 

Pros: why not give it a try.  Strangely enough, you look a lot like my niece, and she's a natural blonde.  Once when she was young enough to do something like this she dyed her hair for a Halloween image of a witch with what was sold as temporary for-gigs black hair dye.  It was supposed to wash out with a simple shampoo.  It didn't wash out, it proved quite permanent, so she was stuck with the results for weeks.  From black to brown to a lighter brown, her hair took a while to gradually revert to blond, so everybody had a chance to observe which shade suits her best.  The verdict: blond.    

Cons: why add hassle to one's life.  There will be plenty of time for that later when there's greys to hide.  (Or not hide -- but then, grey hair is a commitment to a certain attitude in itself... external/yang features are not irrelevant for how one feels inside their yin hiding place.)  

2 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

Oh ?  I thought it was a language 'thing'  ?

 

  'ash blonde '  ;   Californian 

 

 'going grey ' ;  everywhere else .

I think it might be "Australia" rather than "everywhere else," but what do I know.  

29 minutes ago, Mark Foote said:

 

 

Just now, Yin and Yang
the Siamese cats, went out
should'a seen 'em go

Should'a seen 'em go!  

Take a look at the lawman...

Is there life on Mars?  

@Gerard Nice bum...  er...  daobum.

"From all the trouble, my hair turned ash blonde" was a joke. 

This is California.  Between the beach and the bleach, it's common for people's hair to undergo this kind of transformation.    

My favorite cezve/ibrik says hi  

30 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

You nailed it, Mark!  @Taomeow gets my vote for posting the photo? painting?  photo retouched as a painting?  that seems to most completely evoke the essence of her presence here on the board.  There's a sense of darkness, forboding, to the environment in the picture. It's not a safe and welcoming place.  And yet the woman pictured seems alert and resourceful, entirely ready to face whatever challenges might emerge from the mist.  She's got her big boots and her gun.  A tiger follows behind, quiet in the moment and yet we feel a latent ferocity.  To me it seems like the woman and the tiger are intimately connected, mirror images of each other, mutually co-occuring emanations of the same strong spiritual stuff.  This may not be Taomeow as she is (I wouldn't know) but it's certainly Taomeow as I imagine her.

Thank you for your vision.  

It's a painting by a Polish artist Jakub Rozalski, creator of pictures of alternative realities, this one is of an alternative 1920s Europe ravaged by WWI.  It was an illustration for some board game I'm not familiar with.  The woman is supposed to be a Russian aristocrat turned survivalist/warrior, and she does look like a young version of me, and seems to be marching to the same tune as an aspect of me -- though not all of me and not even the primary manifestation in this-here reality.  But definitely an aspect from some alternative one.  

,

I'm happy to see the bums' faces, but my own real life pic has already been my avatar here for such a long forever that I don't look like that anymore.  All the trouble I've seen over these long years has turned my hair completely ash blonde.   

No more bizarre than a whole lot of similarly misdirected but morbidly popular accusations.  

@Keith108  This is a Haiku Chain thread.  This game has been going on for many years with the same rule -- you start your haiku by using the last line of the preceding one as your first line.  It hasn't changed since Mark already told you on a prior occasion:  

On 1/29/2024 at 4:21 PM, Mark Foote said:

 

Hi, Keith108,

The thread you're looking for is "Haiku Unchained", that's here:

 

I think Stigweard has passed away, but he left us his instructions for his "Haiku Chained" thread, in the first post:


 

Stigweard

• The Janitor

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• The Dao Bums

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• 3,939 posts

 

Posted January 11, 2008

Use the last line of the preceding haiku as the first line of yours.

 

The structure is three lines:

 

5 syllables

7 syllables

5 syllables
 

so there you have it.  As is customary on the thread here, I will attempt a patch.
 

not worth the penny

flowers by the roadside, bright

coots and ducks in reeds

coots and ducks in reeds
unseasonable warmth, here
white snow has melted
 

White snow has melted

Moss and lichens revealed

Round and round, just now

 

_/|\_