Khan's Castle

An article by (my favorite) Hanson is a step back from the disheartening gloom of late vis-a-vis Iraq and the Middle East and a call for level-headed remembrance. That doesn't mean it's good news particularly, but it does serve to remind one of the idea that where international relations are concerned, the choices are often not between good and bad, but between bad and worse.

On a lighter note, 12 Monkeys, an SF movie I watched the other night that starred Bruce Willis, turned out to be pretty good.

And in the park today, practicing flute again — grey and overcast before it actually opened up and rained — ended in a little comedy. Even though I was playing very softly and nothing crazy, the woman at the next bench who never said a word after greeting me — in retrospect it seems I was being informed that I had entered her private domain — began sending salvos of cell phone ring tones my way to combat my flute. When I stopped, they stopped. I eventually left when the rain started, half shaking my head, half chuckling.

In the climbing/fitness realm, a couple things — some negative, some positive — have popped up: Both a nagging pain in my left shoulder and one in my left hip feel fairly deep in the joint and are not exactly confidence inspiring. One the other hand, I've started training towards a front-lever and it's not causing any pain — in either shoulder. My hip doesn't really bother me while climbing but when I'm in the office sitting for longer periods of time. I can't quite pinpoint the source of the soreness in either.

As much as anything, this entry is for me to mark the time these particular aches started became chronic rather than occasional.

From an entry I posted in a Flute forum today:

Where I am, fall is in fine form today: warm in the sun, cool in the
shade, with a light breeze shaking colored leaves off the trees.

At lunch, I brought my flute and settled into a bench in the sun at a
little park a couple blocks from my office and set about practicing
in an informal, improvisational way: A slur here, a little tonguing
there, notes in the third octave up to G. Trying not to be a
spectacle, I was playing as softly as I could, mostly long notes,
paying attention to embouchure and tone. Fifteen minutes of wandering
in Em and C and I was getting a little warm in the sun, so I moved to
a bench in the shade, noticing a man reading a book on the next bench
twenty five feet or so away.

Eventually I found my way to the G# key and worked a little E, F and
G# on some Arabic sounding sequences for a few minutes.

Then it was time to go.

As I put the flute away and prepared to sling my pack over my
shoulder my audience of one looked up from his book, smiled, and
said, "Thanks for the music."

I fairly floated back to the office.

And with that small victory for me and my flute, I should have no
trouble at all with motivation to practice the rest of the week.

Enjoyed Happy Feet the weekend before last. Fun film, great animation.

Timeless fall sun dappled leaves crunched under foot as a blood red disc arced the sky to be found by small hands guided by eyes laughing, sparkling. Frothy drink washed down meats, fruits, vegetables in a cornucopia, colorful — red, yellow, green, brown — and rich with hands' labor given to friends.

All appetites sated, all cares forgotten for a while.

A distant horn sounded horses running. Riders splashed with shape and color urged their mounts on. People cheered: Loud, shrill, hoarse, shrieking. One horse caught another, now another, a rider unseated went down, popping up, unhurt —pride perhaps? — and a line is crossed at the crescendo. Decrescendo into milling, laughing, money moved hand to hand, talk emerged from blur to focus, explaining, complaining, restraining, examining the last 6 minutes and its import.

Five more times the horn sounded, horses ran, the cheers rose.

Then later:

Orange sun gone hiding, late afternoon clouds come blocking, left people turning collars up, donning another layer. Gone to fetch my warmth, the crowd distant but horses close. Around a turn they ran, first toward me, then bending toward a jump, white guiding, green challenging rider and beast.

My ears heard this: Only hooves and crops. No crowd obscured the real race of flesh nearer to me than in my life before. Muscles were seen, riders glancing back, glancing fore, snapping spanks prodded horses to their limit. A royal scene of ancient sound and vision flew by quietly, intimately, in the quiet moment at the far end of the track.

I was there. Close, not far.

A couple good articles regarding Iraq: Hanson, Charles Krauthammer.

And then Ann Coulter — sometimes over the top for my tastes — sites some pretty interesting stats about the election.

I finished the 3rd and 4th books in Tezuka's Buddha graphic novel series. Very nicely done, something well worth the time. The local library has the first 6 of the 8. I hope to get them to acquire the last two now that they're out.

Aha! My blog is now migrated to the new beta version of Blogger, which means my name in here is now goldpython, which is what I wanted it to be all along. So there it is.

Last night, Babel turned out to be a real treat of a movie. Several things — close-ups, silent moments, periods where the music is the only sound — lend the film an intimate feel that I relish. It's a tense thriller of sorts where three stories located in different corners of the world are related and drawn together on one level, while commonalities, particularly in the arena of communications, linking them at another.

Other items...

Blew through Kushiel's Scion, the 700 page fourth in Jaqueline Carey's books that include Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen and Kushiel's Avatar. Basically fantasy tales of political intrigue along with well-written action, they are also noteworthy for very intense SM scenes. The main character of the first three, Phedre, is a courtesan additionally trained in the arts of espionage. She's distinguished by being a born anguissette, that is, one who experiences pleasure with pain, a fact used to open doors to places inaccessible to others. Each book covers a good span of time and so by the fourth, the main character is in the next generation, but Phedre and her consort Joscelin still figure into things as strong supporting characters. All of them are page-turners for me. I love them.

I also finished Eric Van Lustbader's Sunset Warrior, an interesting distant future story. I think the sequels should be interesting as well.

Thomas Sowell voices some reasonable frustration with the media in this article. I know that in recent years in particular, my faith in the news simply being reported has been utterly demolished. On the other hand, I remember reading that it was in the 1800's before newspapers became what I thought was normal, to wit, an unbiased presenter of news. Prior to that, they were unabashedly slanted toward their particular cause. It certainly seems that we are taking a step back in time.

A couple impromptus...

I often find great pleasure, if not joy, in small things.

Spiders, for example, never cease to put a smile on my face. I love the way they build their webs, jump around, everything. I'm simply fascinated by them. In a very different vein, I was enjoying earlier today how, when I put just a little effort into it, I can make my handwriting -- printing actually -- look much nicer and easier to read, especially on letters "h", "r", "n" and "m". They tend to be pointy at the top and look more like a "u", but when I make a point to round off the tops then my writing looks so much nicer.

Odd, the things that resonate.