Dispatches from the Crossroads of Culture, Language, & Educational Technology
Japan. Land of the Rising Sun. Home of the world’s first novel. Where spirit, body, and mind are one and the same. gf.me/u/zhwucm In 2011 a mad-eyed tsunami tore through the seaside village of Rikuzentakata. As if the preceding earthquake wasn’t enough. The region fell into a state of anxiety. There remains work to be […]
Oh, Murakami, you sly fox, you mercurial and fluid, thread a web between East and west that we at once desperately need and can’t quite comprehend. And yet we return, thirsty and increasingly drunk of the elixir that is the product of your craft.
Despite the myriad distractions of the modern world, the noise pollution, and all those 21st-century distractions, we are extremely fortunate to live in the Age of Information. I don’t know about you but I for one am prone to info-overload with a somewhat sadistic habit of opening dozens of browsers, windows which I proceed to overload with content, intent on returning… eventually… only to result in a frozen computer.
Welcome to the Floating World of Ukiyo. We’re not going to stop there, oh, no, we’ll encounter literary and artistic movements from throughout the brilliant minds of East Asia. Great and minor, from modern to the ends of memory, time, space.
Bohemian nights in Valencia where the gypsies shred violins into the coming dark
“Rhythmic swells reverberate trough my lungs. The back streets of Valencia.
Back street Europe.
Romani enclaves and gypsy parts of town.
We’ll sit here in the Plaça de la Virgen with our stiff sangria, smartly bashful in red-faced delerium.
For it is Spring and the blossoms have begun to sing.
A nod to blanco nerium”
A poem to the City of Oranges. An Open Love Letter to the City of Valencia, Spain.
Keeping with the dualistic nature of Epic literature to be a hero requires great tragedy. One must all at once bring and preserve life while taking it. Within this text, war is clearly demarcated as a symbol of achieving glory.
