Happy Chinese New Year: Blazing Saddles...

Happy New Year!

It's the year of the horse, with the associated fifth element of wood:

It’s the Lunar New Year and the Chinese Year of the Horse. The horse is part of a 12-year-cycle of animals that make up the Chinese zodiac. These interact with the five elements: wood, metal, fire, water, earth. 2014 is the year of the wood horse, taking over from the year of the water snake. 

GET READY TO RUMBLE 

It will be a fast year full of conflicts according to some astrologers, who see wood as providing fuel for the energetic horse sign. The later part of the year is “yin fire”, increasing the potential for heated clashes even more. Feng shui practitioner Raymond Lo told Reuters: “The upcoming Horse year is also a 'yang wood' year, when people will stick more to their principles and stand firm. So it is hard to negotiate or compromise as there are more tendencies for people to fight for their ideals.”

Having US of American politics in mind, that's a grim prediction by Feng shui practitioner Raymond Lo. I'm not a student of geomancy, but perhaps it would've served us better if the fiery horse had paired up with, say, earth.  Then we could go around ordering the extremists of all political parties to stop imagining zebras running amok.  

"That's the good, solid sound of a fiery, fierce, proud horse running freely across hard dirt," we could tell them.  "That's not endless herds of wild, displaced, burning zebras tearing about the Capitol Rotunda." It is bound to come up during immigration reform discussions, and Lord help us later in the year, when mid-term elections bear down upon our National Sanity Reserves.

But why borrow trouble on New Year's very first day?  Instead enjoy some of these representations of the blazing steed known by Westerners as an unadorned, unpretentious 2014.  For an excellent short explanation of the well-kept "Chinese" lunar calendar, check out this Christian Science Monitor article.

The art/graphics were found HERE, and are, for the moment, offered for use as cards, calendars, and such, free of charge.

© 2013 L. Ryan

"Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crecen las palmas..."

May 3, 1919 - January 27, 2014

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crecen las palmas

Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crecen las palmas

Y antes de morirme quiero echar mis versos del alma

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Mi verso es de un verde claro y de un carmin encendido

Mi verso es de un verde claro y de un carmin encendido

Mi verso es un ciervo herido que busca en el monte amparo

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees

Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul

My verses are light green but they are also flaming red

I cultivate a rose in June and in January

For the sincere friend who gives me his hand

And for the cruel one who would tear out this heart with which I live

I do not cultivate thistles nor nettles I cultivate a white rose

Cultivo la rosa blanca en junio como en enero

Cultivo la rosa blanca en junio como en enero

Para el amigo sincero que me da su mano franca

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Y para el cruel que me arranca el corazon con que vivo

Y para el cruel que me arranca el corazon con que vivo

Cardo ni ortiga cultivo cultivo la rosa blanca

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Con los pobres de la tierra quiero yo mi suerte echar

Con los pobres de la tierra quiero yo mi suerte echar

El arroyo de la sierra me complace mas que el mar

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

ugly bedroom

i've been quiet because... things turn on a dime.

anyone want to come and redesign my bedroom?  the centerpiece is now one butt-ugly brown hospital bed. i remain, o my president, author of obamacare, which allowed me to receive a hospital bed with trapeze within 48 hours of the doctor ordering it, o do i remain ever grateful!

but a butt-ugly bedroom will not do.

new rugs will be necessary, because i don't want to fall off the butt-ugly brown bed onto the slick butt-ugly brown floor.

this morning, after dear fred went to a sunday morning shake-and-bake with the militant existential lesbian feminists, taking along a gourmet tuna salad with a fresh and golden loaf of bread, i challenged myself.  "self," i said...

sorry.

anyway, i cleaned the common areas we share with the castafiore and her amours, and with the hangers-on that groups such as ours attract.  mollusks. oops.  typed that out loud, i did!

in my brief period of profound laziness, the feline triumvirate has been intensively training.  dry, sculptural, free-standing hair ball sculptures tucked like hidden treasures behind furniture legs -- sublime!  a stylized swirl of hardened ocean waves, slick and seemingly splashing, reaching for the sky -- carefully presented alongside a gravity-bound fourteenth-century leather and iron virginal hope chest.  the first pieces were clearly the creation of marmy fluffy butt, and her fury was swift and fierce when my efforts to preserve her commentary on world hunger somehow fell prey to the chaotic anti-art suction of my hoover.  the watery, shellacked offering was from the suddenly shy buddy, of maine coon provenance, and he approved its destruction, seeing his arching, asiatic columns as bits of performance art that already were passé.

using the forensic skills that only advanced students of french literature (and its intertwined, inbred complications known as critics) are able to focus upon the disparate remnants of avant garde cat art, i determined that dobby, the edgiest of this feline force, had dabbled with such success in a retrospective homage to trompe-l'oeil that it will be only by chance that we discern his gastric artiface from our hooman accoutrements and clutter.

so i am back in the putrid brown bed.  i confess that it helps my body relax, that joints previously screaming at an annoying level are now making only the occasional habitual moue.

but this room... this room.  a disaster.  i offer proof:

© 2013 L. Ryan