26 October 2015

Bird Songs, Weather Signs

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Hanging out my laundry today on the veranda, I noticed a few unique bird songs that I haven’t heard in a long time. Migratory birds from up north in China have arrived, chirping their little hearts out.

The last couple of days have been horribly hot, as the sun has no longer been obscured by clouds. I have been sleeping in swim trunks with two fans blowing on me full blast. The forecast calls for rain tomorrow, so maybe we’ll get some relief.

A curious weather difference between SE Asia and North America. In America (and several other worldwide locations) the reliable weather saying is: “red at night, sailors’ delight; red in the morning, sailors take warning”. Here it is the opposite. At sundown just now our western sky is red, which made me re-check the weather reports. Sure enough, thunderstorms tomorrow.

I skipped the philosophy book meet up in the city tonight. Plato is just too boring, and it’s a major hassle to get into town and back. Maybe next month, if the book is right.

-Zenwind.

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19 October 2015

October in the Kingdom

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After a rather dry but cloudy Rainy Season, we ended it with a lot of rain in early October. That appears to be ending now, and on the last two nights I’ve seen the moon for the first time in recent memory.

I try to post here at least once a month in order to let anyone interested know that I’m still alive and kicking. I haven’t written much of anything anywhere lately – either on blogs or in personal correspondence – since I’ve been reading a huge amount of stuff and watching a lot of movies, both in theaters and on DVD.

I also just found a big trove of my old music CDs hidden amongst Tuk’s junk that were “lost” during the chaos of the Great Flood of 2011 when we had to scramble and move everything up to higher ground; and I’ve been laboriously transferring this music first to my computer and then to my phone’s music files. (My Beethoven 9th Symphony – the “glorious Ninth” in the words of Alex in A Clockwork Orange -- was a flawed CD so I had to buy another one to upload.)

We are doing well, all in all. I still have a fragmented blood clot throughout my entire left leg (Deep Vein Thrombosis) from last December. I take the anti-coagulant meds and see the doctor for regular monitoring blood tests and for periodic ultra-sound scans. I seem to be very susceptible to blood clots, since this is far from the first time, and I’m scared to death of any inactivity and long-distance airplane flights.

I am a member of three Bangkok book club meet up groups, but I rarely make it to any events. I’ve always been an extremely undisciplined random reader who reads what he likes when he likes. This caused problems in high school and in my early attempts at college in my early-twenties. (When I returned to finish my philosophy and history studies in my late-thirties I was very much on-task as far as readings.) Now, I’ve been spoiled since my retirement by the freedom to read randomly again. I’m ignoring most of these book club readings now, mainly because they don’t make me laugh enough. Laughter is the very best medicine!

I attended one meet up of the Bangkok Philosophy and Classical Literature book club last month, its first one. The book was On Anger by the Roman Stoic Seneca. Good book, great international group with a lot of smart young thinkers mixed with older ones with long reading experiences. The book was a good analysis of anger, and I was forced to confront my own history of anger (and violence). In this respect, “assigned” readings that I wouldn’t have ordinarily encountered can be invaluable.

This month’s philosophy reading (next week) is Plato’s dialogue, Meno. I first read this 30 years ago, and reading it again is every bit as boring. (I really love Plato’s classic The Apology, the trial defense, aka “apology”, of Socrates; and I enjoy The Symposium for its wonderful theater; but Plato generally bores me to death and I loathe his totalitarian mindset.) In Meno: “innate” knowledge as a somehow “recalled memory” from some kind of past existence? Needless to say, I’m skeptical. To be honest, I’m a bit irked to have been seduced into re-reading this – which activity hijacked my precious time for writing and for reading other things. I may go to the meet up next week, but generally I have retired from argument and may have nothing to say.

I have lately been reveling in the re-reading of the wonderful Charles Stross series, The Laundry Files. They are called “Lovecraftian spy thrillers”: bizarre horror; hard science fiction; dry British humour. Wow. (Look for a review of this series in the future on Zenwind.)

This week is my regular 90-day visit to the dread Immigration Office on Wednesday, then celebration of the birthday of Franz Liszt (b.1811) on Thursday, followed by our long holiday weekend. My main aim this week is to push my exercise regimen into a major re-start after a long spell of decline and sloth due to ill health and pain. (“What a drag it is getting old” – The Rolling Stones.)

Yet, from the perspective of H.W. Longfellow: “Excelsior!” (That is a poem!)

-Zenwind.

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