drumroll please

ta da! lets hear it for peer pressure.

waiting for the weekend to happen

go ahead. any moment now. call me and tell me youve won a weekend in trieste and you want me to drop everything and come now. tell me you have to tickets to a circus, or you want to have a cappucino and croissant with peach marmalade in the old town square. how about a movie? or running? ask me if i want to go and explore the jewish quarter, or jump over a fence and make snow angels in four different front yards. or jump on a bus and see where its going and get off after 10 stops.

hmmm id love to but no thanks. i have to go to tesco.

rx

not poetry week

tantalizing. absolutely finger lickin good. i have no idea who you are and its burning me up inside. unless its highly unlikely jane. but then which jane? but one of the comment reminded me of a poem i read and then when looking for it realized it wasnt that one it was in fact this one that had come back to me. no more after this one i promise, the abstract is becoming far to....

Streaks of green and yellow iridescence,
Silver shiftings,
Rings veering out of rings,
Silver -- gold --
Grey-green opaqueness sliding down,
With sharp white bubbles
Shooting and dancing,
Flinging quickly outward.
Nosing the bubbles,
Swallowing them,
Fish.


rx(not part of the poem)

exhaust

why has he stopped writing?, as i go into a spiral of nonsense. why have three of my friends made comments that he has stopped writing, but none to the effect that i have? tell us please!!!
rx

a non e-mouse

who are you my little learned friend?- the delicious scent of irony and a pinch of conaissance? a hint of the past and a vast resource of literary jousting just around the corner. tell me tell me tell me- no wait, dont, its like the smell of something cooking that you never know what it actually is, much better than the taste of the food in your mouth, tantalizing and exciting but lost on your average hungry mug.

me i was always the one in the experiment that took the chocolate and never waited another hour to get two instead- at least i acknowledge it and maybe this will teach me a little about waiting.

or maybe its just the bacon burning on the stove.

tell me more tell me more
rx

rawalpindi

this was meant to be with the 'tooth guy' post but i coudnt find it when i was in pakistan...

All moveables of wonder, from all parts,
Are here--Albinos, painted Indians, Dwarfs,
The Horse of knowledge, and the learned Pig,
The Stone-eater, the man that swallows fire,
Giants, Ventriloquists, the Invisible Girl,
The Bust that speaks and moves its goggling eyes,
The Wax-work, Clock-work, all the marvellous craft
Of modern Merlins, Wild Beasts, Puppet-shows,
All out-o'-the-way, far-fetched, perverted things,
All freaks of nature, all Promethean thoughts
Of man, his dulness, madness, and their feats
All jumbled up together, to compose
A Parliament of Monsters. Tents and Booths
Meanwhile, as if the whole were one vast mill,
Are vomiting, receiving on all sides,
Men, Women, three-years' Children, Babes in arms.

Oh, blank confusion! true epitome
Of what the mighty City is herself,
To thousands upon thousands of her sons,
Living amid the same perpetual whirl
Of trivial objects, melted and reduced
To one identity, by differences
That have no law, no meaning, and no end--
Oppression, under which even highest minds
Must labour, whence the strongest are not free.

wordsworth from 'the prelude'.

rose colored glasses

beijing,china
anyone who doubts that this is the new capital of the world needs to get here quick. when the tell tale signs of young people with money to burn and spiky hair are everywhere, the writing is well and truly on the wall.

lost in translations

well, my little sesame seeds, the time has come. i have come to the end of the line, ont he eastern edge of the middle kingdom. what has there been to learn from this little pasadito al mundo? the universal truths it seems, are called that for a reason, and i knew very soon after i bought my first backpack 7 years ago, that they are true. this time, along with others, it is with the finest pleasure and the warmest heart that i have re-learned about the morning sun on your face, the smell of good coffee as you walk by a shop, the cameraderie of two o clock in the morning bleary eyed and exhausted, the hidden smiles and cheeky winks of locals, who are, i am convinced of it, exactly the same as us.

it is testimony of the power of fear and propaganda that 7 years down the line i still doubt that fact that things and people will be the same wherever i go in the world, and i am always, and completely and utterly, wrong.

here i walk around with my head in the stars, dizzy from the height of the buildings and the goodness of the people, just as i have done in cairo, caracas, and cracow.i guess it is a reason to not stop having a look around the next corner wherever it may be.

i will continue to post here- although perhaps not as frequently- i move onto the next page of the book, put on a different hat, and will try to convince people that i am, contrary to first impressions, not a raving lunatic.

hasta pronto
rx

choisir, escoger

some nice comments about choice from three people i respect a bit:)

my dad: it's your life- you make the choices and then live with them

tom in london: its the choices you dont make that are the ones youll always wonder about

tom in beijing: choisir c'est perdre, mais ne choisir pas, ce'st perdre encore plus.

me, i like to choose- but i find that life always has a way of helping out a bit.

hard sleeper

ive always got such damn cold feet. and i even stole some hotel slippers to put in the inside of my shoes for some extra sole/soul. tonight the train to gansu province, things have changed since six years ago and now a computer spits out the still unintelligible tickets- i remember only cardboard chits that looked more like dominoes.

nice food, nice people, and a touch of the exotic still: cattle markets and desert silk road towns- unfortunately all the buddhist caves have been visited by muslims and had the faces of the buddhas scratched out. but still desert desert all around, and the camels(two humps)look more like lions.

and fellowship on the road is at an all time high, interesting people to share the fried rice and local wine with, makes it all the more worth while.

more as it happens
rx

dunhuang, china

still alive :)