(Non-)Pomp & Circumstance

Mucking about before the graduation the of the brother (like the running of the bulls, but with more mortar boards and a slightly lower casualty rate).

Aural Tableau

A private music lesson in the park surrounding the Temple of Heaven, in Beijing.  This was a really beautiful and inspiring public space- full of music, games, and group exercise.

Frankenstorm(king)'s Monster

I passed the hurricane quite comfortably in relatively untouched Philly, so I have no photos of dramatic destruction and the raw power of nature, hubris of man and his works, etc.  Instead, here is a view of Zhang Huan's "Three-Legged Buddha" at the Storm King Art Center.

It Tolls for Thee

And now a switch to western funeral traditions- this melancholy, beckoning angel tops a grave in the Woodland Cemetery near my house.  Its quite old, full of stately family plots, beautifully landscaped and my favorite place in the neighborhood to run.  This was taken at dusk a few days after an early-winter snow.

View on a Hindu Funeral, Three

Pashupatinath and the Bagmati river.  The crowd has dispersed, but the pyres will continue to burn for hours.

View on a Hindu Funeral, Two

There were two funerals that day.  The first was a military funeral, replete with honor guard, brass band, and attendance by a a politician/entourage with enough celebrity to draw quite a crowd of locals.  I do not know who he was, I only know he was not this man, Prachanda, former Maoist guerrilla leader and former Prime Minister, the only Nepali political figure I could hope to recognize on sight.  The crowd, mourners, politicians and soldiers, and together with the idle watchers, dispersed shortly after the pyre was lit.  I admit I was surprised that the time of observance would be so short, but then remembered that in western funerals, too, most memorializing and remembrance of the deceased comes before the burial.

In this image, the second man is prepared for his funeral rites as smoke from the first pyre fills the sky.  In the foreground, in the river, can be seen the remains of a previous cremation.

View on a Hindu Funeral, One

While visiting Pashupatinath, a holy area on the Bagmati River in Kathmandu, Nepal, we passed a series of stone pylons covered by corrugated metal.  Could not figure out their purpose until a group of soldiers filed in, bearing a body wrapped in white and orange, wreathed in chains of marigolds....

Studious let me sit

...and hold high converse with the mighty dead. (Thomson, The Seasons)

Buddhist pilgrims study texts before the wall of the Bodhinath stupa, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Vignette

Two monks at the base of the Swayambhunath hill, Kathmandu, Nepal.

(Not really very) Bokehlicious

Yes, it's a very shallow depth of field, but it ain't bokeh to write home about.

Daintily-etched characters on a sandstone wall, in southern China.

Bad Rubbish

Nepali children playing in an impromptu (and massive) garbage dump beneath a bridge in Kathmandu.

Little Buddha

A carving from Baodingshan, in China.  I unfortunately can't remember which wall I found this little guy on, and there's not enough to reference in the background for a cross-check on the interwebs.  But judging by his blissfully devotional countenance, I think he is not, for example, from the section of the relief which depicts the "Hells of Excrement and Impaling."

Ich Bin Ein

The Berlin Cathedral, juxtaposed with an Epcot-ish, 60s vision of future-modern architecture, the Fernsehturm, a television tower which is the tallest structure in Germany.  In the sunlight, a cross forms on the sphere- thus it is known colloquially as "the Pope's Revenge" (blahblah, secular democratic Germany, blahblah can't supress the power of jesus, shining forth from your devil tower, blahblah).

Sherpa (Pre-)Craft, Three

A Sherpani uses a rather spindly spindle to coil some freshly spun yak-fur yarn, in a Namche side street.

Behind her are signs for two of the many, many tourist-oriented amenities in the town- massage for weak, weary, western muscles, and a salon to rid oneself of one's mountain (wo)man-ity.

Sherpa Craft, Two

The Om Mani Padme carved into a defunct yak horn, near Khumjung.

Sherpa Craft, One

A Buddhist ceremonial horn, found in the Sherwi Khangba Sherpa Culture Museum above Namche Bazaar.

Helping Hands

The thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, or Guanyin in Chinese, the mythological Bodhisattva of Compassion who requested and received 1,000 hands in order to save all sentient life.  Baodingshan, near Dazu, China.

Ablutions

Two women having a wash in the morning sun, in Kathmandu.  This was a spring (maybe?  or upwelling from the nearby river?  whatever it was, it was not untouched by the dodgy Kathmandu groundwater) in a little shrine below the temple complex at Swayambhunath.

All the World's a Stage

Performance of traditional Chinese theater, Xi'an.  Can't for the life of me remember the story (it was one of many), but I do remember that it was beautifully staged and that the accompanying dinner involved more varieties of dumpling than I thought possible.

Airports upon a hill, part two

The Lukla greeting committee, a combination of would-be porters and the (not pictured) Nepalese military.  Very few of these men, if any, are Sherpa- most porters in the Himalaya are of other ethnicities such as the Rai, Tamang, Magar, or Gurung, drawn from even poorer areas of the country without the big-money tourist draw of Everest or Annapurna.  Female Sherpa take portering jobs (internal ones rather than directly for the tourists, or so it seemed), but the men mostly stick to the high-prestige, highish-profit mountaineering and guiding.  Judging from the attitude of our friends' guide, some (most?) Sherpa look down on these ethnic interlopers a bit, especially those from the lowlands (who tend to be Hindu rather than Buddhist).