one of the best places

Maybe poetry is one of the best places in this country. The clarity and courage, particularizing.
Photo: Street, Northpoint, Hong Kong
Text: Excerpt from an essay in progress
I send very clear wishes for a, d + l who have poetic things on today.

deep full light

Full moon today, full moon tonight.
I think of the saying, 'live lightly,
think deeply.'
Photo: Full moon over Peace Park, Hiroshima
Text: The slogan of Resurgence magazine

very berry

Here, have a berry, it's a very rainy day in Hong Kong.
Photo: Berries by the library, Tai Hang

no worrywart

The flower of St. John's Wort, used to ease depression, looks like the buttercup bloom. And on the inside handle to the front door of my home is the word 'shine', so every time I leave, I say please, try to do just that.
Photo: St. John's Wort, in the garden, New Zealand

1 cat, 365 cats

Today marks a full year of this daily blog.
Every day, I place a photographic image and a handful of sounds, thoughts and other images. For me, this is a place of peace.
As I wrote at the beginning, in 2010 'the first touch' entry, there will be mistakes - some days feel more complete than others.
Here, today, that black blur next to the arc may be a cat.
Photo: The Peace Park, Hiroshima, by night

musical clips

This music lives downstairs from my home.

Photo: Fabric wrapped around a hawker's stall, Tai Hang, Hong Kong

demonstrations: protests of innocence

Demonstrations are protests of innocence...

There is an innocence to be defended and an innocence which must finally be lost: an innocence that derives from justice, and an innocence which is the consequence of a lack of experience.

Photo: Carpark, Hong Kong

Text: John Berger, from his essay, The Nature of Mass Demonstrations, 1968

metal arc, yellow uenuku

There once was a springtime when we saw a rainbow every day. I did not always believe it, and maybe he didn't either.

I know a girl who believes.

She is seven and lives in a house with seventeen cats, do I want one? We are riding a bus from Taupo, and she sings long songs.  She says the wind in the fields is a grass swimming pool, and after the downpour, when the sky turns yellow, she sees a very high 'uenuku'. That's rainbow in Pakeha, she teaches me.

Photo: In the yard, New Zealand

Text: The third paragraph is the beginning of a prose poem.

'Pakeha' is a word for New Zealanders who are not of Maori boodlines.

door and floor and anyway

When I see this door leading into a gymnasium floor, I am reminded of my senior high school, which had an old warped wooden floor we only used for P.E. lessons, not for league games and tournaments. I played one of my best basketball games there anyway.
Photo: Honkawa School, Hiroshima, Japan

I don't know where to look

In this photograph, I don't know where to look. I had to put my camera lens within the wires of a chain-linked fence to take the image, and now that  it is here, the eye runs in several directions.
Photo: A view off a side street, Texas 

November sun

Here, a little sun for November one.
Photo: A new building going up, Hong Kong

glowing

Today, tonight, is Halloween, and last week, I gave some long glow-in-the-dark fingernails for a child to wear on a dark night. When I too was a child, my best costume was as a mummy, strips of white fabric circling my legs and arms, torso and head. Just the other evening, I was walking to my home in Hong Kong, and two girls wearing long black hats on the sidewalk gave me two marshmallow candies. All of us glowing.
Photo: A staircase, Hiroshima, Japan
Text: I also wish Tai Wah a glowing birthday, 94th

the room

Tiny, the room feels more for interrogation than song.
Photo: Karaoke Room, 12 Oil Street, Northpoint
site of the former Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club
soon to be the site of the Arts Promotion Office

seeing blue

I once wrote a poem
titled 'Seeing blue'
which begins:
Blue is everything we cannot touch.
Photo: Steps to a stage, Central, Hong Kong