Rice Paddies Behind the Perimeter Fence

When I checked in on TW's blog this afternoon, his usually successful tripartite construction failed.  I always appreciate his efforts to make the parts speak to one another, but today they stood alone.

Yes, I know.  I am projecting.

The first two black-and-whites took my breath away, and I still, even now, refuse to accept their provenance.  I could give a royal crap that Tumbleweed is so delusional as to think he knows where they were taken (still, I'd love to have "Poin'dexter's view west" explained!).  Tanner Trail yadda yadda yadda.
Likely story, dude.

I refuse his specificity because I've substituted my own -- and not just my own place names, but time of place, as well:  The view from our back yard, 1968.




TW:  Poin'dexter's view west
Retired Educator:  View from our backyard, 1968



TW: Tanner Trail vista
Retired Educator:  View from our backyard, 1968

No, I'm not gonna tell you where we had our backyard that year (that incredible year for all of us on the planet).

And maybe it wasn't quite as spectacular, and maybe our conscribed point of view made such a view actually impossible, and, okay, there was no river, now that I think about it, but still, I imagined rivers, or maybe more standing water, yes, standing water, for there was water in the heavy air, which makes for incredible greens and blacks, and I remember strange silence, too.

My Brother-Unit named the whole entry: Below Is The Green Water Billowing On -- which comes from the Li Bai poem he featured below the photos (along with a video of David Oistrakh performing Debussy's Clair de Lune in Paris, 1962).

There's a third photo but it doesn't fit the fantasy of my memory, so you will have to just up and take your lazy self on over to American Idyll and see it for yourself.  TW claims it's of Mencius and Confucius Temple from Whites Butte but you cannot always trust him.

I am not such a Debussy fan, either, and Clair de lune is just wrong for these photos of my backyard, back then.  In 1968.

The grasshoppers weave

their autumn song by the

golden railing of the well.

Frost coalesces

on my bamboo mat,

changing its colour with cold.

My lonely lamp is not bright,

I’d like to end these thoughts.

I roll back the hanging,

gaze at the moon,

and sigh long in vain.

The beautiful person

is like a flower beyond

the edge of the clouds.

Above is the black night

of heaven's height.

Below is the green water billowing on.

The sky is long. The road is far. Bitter flies my spirit.

The spirit I dream can't get through.

The mountain pass is hard.

Long yearning breaks my heart.

--Li Bai