white relief

Sometimes I'd had it up to here with gold ornateness,
& my eyes would rest on white walls, or dappled shadows.
One day I happened on a small temple with mostly white
stucco decoration, fine work too, it was lovely.
Then I could welcome some more exuberant if not totally
over the top swirls upon swirls of gold & primary colours.
The variations on a theme are truly amazing.

If I did this before, watch it again, producing a book by hand,
don't you love it?

wired

crisscrossed over the crisscrosses..

An unenviable job in most parts of asia. No one, it seems,
ever had the thought to conceal the wires. Again, I found
myself deleting them from what I was seeing, though the
camera didn't censor. Makes you wonder
how much else we filter out of what's apparently there,
doesn't it?

eyemagazine
Heard a scary program on abc radio national, re the debate
on developing the coal & gas fields near Dalby/Tara/Chinchilla
in Queensland. Apparently the extraction process results in
large amounts of salt in the (farming) land. How stupid is that?
Lots of export $ but one more crucial area gone from
food production. (can't find the recent program, sorry)
My family lived around there in the early 50's.

fragments

One of Chiang Mai's most prominent temples has a smaller
side building with fragments of once superb
narrative paintings, that are still worth hours of looking.
Hard to photograph, as a flash will speed deterioration.

A short clip on Balthus in the lovely light of his
remarkable house, the whole thing looks like one of his pictures.
I hope your connection is speedier than mine, could be
many interesting pieces on the site .

democratic

While the lower 2 goddesses are in the market, the others are
in the grounds of a temple which I came to see as
the most democratic: along with the animals, there's a full range

of skill in the decorations, plus some very fine painting.
Everyone had a go, even donald duck was there.



& then..! in fact the effect was well balanced, in place.

Old backgrounds from animated movies ( I find them
interesting because I did that for 2 full length ones, way back)

dogs

At a forest temple near Chiang Mai, there were proverbs
nailed to trees, & these more modern posters,
most faded to blues, which appeared to illustrate the perils
of gambling, booze, the fast life. I find them funny,
especially since there are always lots of dogs & cats around
the temples ~ several bailed me up one day at a small
place, quite fiercely; as I grew up around
lots of animals, I knew what tone of voice to use.

some Jataka tales

good fortune

There's a tremendous interest, there, in luck, in having good
fortune helped along with the right amulet etc.
One morning in Bangkok I started looking for a tiny buddha
to wear around my neck. Everyone around got involved in
finding me the lucky one, then added extras, it was fun.

a lucky find: amulets with Kitaro on youtube

open smiles

A few of the beautiful smiles everywhere.
Perhaps the most affecting was one morning, quite early,
an old man (probably my age!) pedaling his rickshaw
slowly along, with, loaded onto the seat, a whole big tree
cut into pieces. He gave me the sweetest smile, it spoke
volumes, am still enjoying it.

paper forest, see the clip at March 6, (& many others)