Madame M:
I have a patio. It just doesn’t get much direct
sunlight. Would that work?
What a wonderful
hummingbird experience! The beings of
nature seem drawn to one who is symbiotic with their interests. My daughter has similar experiences.
I traveled to DC again,
in July, again. But this time it was on
business, so I have no photos like last year.
I did however observe a woman every morning at breakfast at the
hotel. While the rest of the people
around her were engrossed in gorging themselves, she was sipping tea or coffee
and reading a book. There was usually a
half eaten container of yogurt near her.
On the last day of the trip, I asked her what she was reading. She held up a book with D.H. Lawrence as the
author and some writing I couldn’t read.
“It’s in Greek,” she
said in an accent. “Uhm, how do you
translate…’The Lover of Lady Chatterly,’” she continued. Ah, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, I replied, very
good. Enjoy, I said, and walked to my
shuttle, not saying what I was thinking, that I suspect it’s a bit more robust
than 50 Shades of Grey (which is snobbish to think, and a bit unfair, given
that I haven’t read either).
DC is still consumed
with itself, if you’re wondering. Such a
skewed and self-created and self-referential world in so many cases!
You know those airline
magazines? I always read through them
and see if they have interesting things.
I picked up a phrase out of one: “Stay
long enough to go slow.” It was from a
young couple, traveling through, as coincidence would have it, Greece. They felt rushed and exhausted while they did
all of the usual sights. Then they
talked to a local guide, and he gave them the philosophy just espoused, and
also some suggestions on how to do that.
They did, enjoying a view that the locals do, at night. And a beach they picked out all by
themselves, that they had essentially all to themselves. They enjoyed the pace and contemplation much
more. And, even, came to understand and
feel just a small part of what it is to value as a Greek.
May I recommend a
movie? Dawn of Planet of the Apes. It is rare that I agree with a wide range of
movie critics, and rarer still that I give a movie an A-. But I agree with them that the movie has
intelligence, emotional resonance, timeless insight and wisdom, and conveys the
tragically self-destructive limitations that are the result of legacies from
injustice.
My daughter has
inherited her father’s love of summer, and unenthusiasm for school to start up
again. Apparently, she grinds at the
thought of class blocks of 1.5-2 hours, where she has to drone along at the
slowest swimmer’s pace. Except for
Mandarin class. As one of the few
Caucasians in it, she’s one of the slower swimmers, lol.
Back to the movie. Did you see where a zoologist took two chimps
to a screening of the above movie? They
apparently understood the movie very well, and followed who were the villains
and who were the good folks. Some fellow
movie goers were concerned, however, that they chimps would get ideas.
Fear. Fear is a theme in
so much of the movie, but the irony was apparently lost on them. From Thucydides (a Greek!) to now, things
just haven’t changed all that much!
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