| LINKS TO EVERYTHING |
|---|
| 2005 - 2006 TRIP: 500 DAYS ABROAD
BLOGRINGS
RAMBLINGS
p
nothing that is copyrighted by the author of this site can be copied, pasted, or in any manner reproduced without the author's permission.
All personal postings and pictures and any other creative output on this site which are the sole creations of the author are copyright (c) Colin Nisbet 2002, copyright (c) Colin Nisbet 2005, copyright (c) Colin Nisbet 2006, copyright (c) Colin Nisbet 2007 |
|
| Along the Mongolian JourneyI came up to the old man sifting through the ashes and ruins on what appeared to be the outskirts of some city whose name had long been forgotten. The myriad roads winding, circling, shooting in and out had, in some distant past, fallen into disrepair, lurching towards a central built up area long abandoned. Some ancient stanza ricochets around in my head but I can no longer place such things or put them back in order. I look down at his tatters, his emaciated figure tugging closely to his skeleton as if it is afraid to let go knowing what was soon surely to come. Yet there was this strange smile glowing across his leathered face, darkened by layers of overexposure, wind, and pus, knitting together a mosaic of wrinkles, telling his personal history in much the same way tree circles do. I asked him Old man, what are you doing down there going through this junk and he kept smiling, looking for whatever it was that he thought he needed. I nudge him with the worn steel tip of my cracked-leather boots, trying to get the attention out of him that I hadn't yet realized I already had. Yet there is no acknowledgment from him in the way I would like so I nudge him again, asking him what business he has here. I push him too hard and he falls on his side, looks up towards me but past my head and towards the sun, forcing a merciless gaze upon the cracked earth, long ridden by drought. The old man just smiles. I wonder what lay beneath that ancient facade of dirt and stone and sleep mixed with the sand of past no longer known to us. He turns on his side, keeps sifting and sifting, pulling himself, elbow deep into the dark muck. I do not know what he is doing or why. I garner neither scrap nor scintilla of what he is doing. He turns for a second, twisting his eye nearest the sun, towards me and I capture an unwavering depth in his fleeting gaze. A coldness sweeps over me, words and images flash through my head whose mystery and meaning is lost on me the moment I try to make any sense of them. He turns back to the black muck, his body half ensconced in the mess and now eaten up by the earth, a disembodied senile smile lurking only in my memory.
| | |
| The Last One to FallIn a few minutes, I will begin taking the last final of my second year at law school. I'll be two for three in just under 24 hours.
| | |
| Indiana PrimaryEven though I'm in Ohio right now, Indiana is finishing up its primary or has just closed all the polls recently. Anyway, if you're a Hoosier, one thing that is not quite as exciting for us as is most of the rest of the country is the primaries and caucuses. We come way after Super Tuesday. So late in the game is Indiana that usually the candidate already has the requisite number of delegates pledged or one candidate is so far ahead that the other candidates should have thrown in the towel much earlier. That's how it's been...until this season. In the search for the perfect Democratic candidate, Indiana and its voters have become important. If you're a Republican, which more Hoosiers are than not - at least last time I checked - then it's probably not very exciting to begin with, unless you're one of those red-staters that's going out to vote for the Democratic candidate you think will fare the worst against McCain, having won the nomination long ago.
I'm off to check the polls now. This was the last big day. I wonder if it'll really change anything, though.
| | |
| Weekly Photo Challenge: How Was Your Holiday?This weeks subject is suggested by LadyLioness1973
HOW WAS YOUR HOLIDAY?
I've had several holidays here and there. Yeah. I can post a picture from Istanbul or Vientiane. I have pictures from the cobbled streets spreading along the canals of Amsterdam and pictures on a boat in Australia where we fed alligators (or were they crocodiles - I forget the distinctions but then again I was never one to do well with the life sciences).
Maybe you mean an actual holiday instead of trip or vacation. It doesn't have necessarily the same meaning in the U.S. or at least where I'm from - the Midwest. We usually say the name of the holiday in my home state. "How was your Fourth?" - pertaining to one's celebration of the Fourth of July. How was your New Year's/Christmas/Easter?
All those had taken on new meanings for me when I was overseas traveling around each time I have been abroad.
Being back in the States, I noticed that I don't have much in the way of ritual for holidays. All the things that I did as a child: hunting for easter eggs, Christmas presents under the tree, fireworks, Valentine's Day chocolate, etc. all were focused around kids. Once I've grown up, that's all gone by the wayside and now holidays are just another day off.
On the flipside, I've noticed how other cultures have taken an approach to Western holidays adding their own ethnic flourishes to the mix. For instance, I was in Cambodia, visiting Angkor Wat as Christmas approached. Because my accommodation was in Siem Reap, the nearest town for getting onto the old Angkorian complex, and filled with tourists from all over the world, especially from the West, a Christmas tree was installed opposite where a Buddha, I am conjecturing, sits all year long.
Valentine's Day 2006 corresponded to my visit to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo. I had made several friends while I was there and dragged one of them to lunch with me. I really have never been one for Valentine's and so when my friend, who is a woman, brought this up. My reply was a shrug of the shoulders. Earlier that morning, the Chinese woman who had helped me set up a last minute diving adventure at Sipadan where I would leave KK for the next day wished me a happy Valentine's Day in a very suggestive voice. Obviously, she put more thought and meaning into the day than I had.
Speaking of Valentine's Day, the very next holiday - if you would call it that, I spent walking through the consequences of a freak blizzard that swept over the Cleveland area and shut down the school. What was suppose to be a day on became a day off - until I had to help my roommates shovel the driveway.
That's how one my holidays was.
(c) Colin Nisbet 2007
| | |
| Coming Around the End of the Fourth Semester
 
(c) Colin Nisbet 2006 (c) Colin Nisbet 2006
(c) Colin Nisbet 2006
Tomorrow is the first of my law school exams. It seems as if I just took last semester's a few weeks ago. Here are pictures from what seem to be from another lifetime. Here, I wonder if the men must have felt like I do now. Working on something far greater than themselves that have predated them and will outlast them. That's what going through whole process feels like to me at times.
| | |
|
True
Lifetime
