Sunday, January 25, 2015

ONCE IN VERMONT ~








 
Traditional dancing at the Malikha lodge
  photo ~ Brigitte Lacombe for The New York Times




It isn't Vermont, but present day Myanmar, although I can remember a time in back hills Vermont
where this lush description of pure simple nothingness/everything, was also my own habitat:



"Here, local people tend to retire and rise with the sun. Each new day is announced not by cellphones, clock radios or the beeping of other digital devices, but by the first insomniac rooster’s prelight reveille, a clarion call that quickly triggers a wrap-around sonic cacophony, as every other backsliding rooster in the neighborhood joins in to herald the dawn. Then from across the river, where rice paddies step down to the shore, come the sounds of crying babies, laughing children and the chopping of wood. Only then does the sky begin to brighten and smoke begin to curl up from cooking fires. And when the sun finally does burst forth to limn the frieze of jagged, snow-capped peaks behind the forested foothills, it is, indeed, like being present at creation."



Read more of this fascinating article by Orville Schell, long in the tooth with Asia, old & new, as well as the whole of the Pacific Rim.