Years of Poems and Spirits

Since I don’t write often, I might as let the momentum carry me one more tonight.

Just came back from a day hike to the Carne Mountain near Leavenworth. It was a pleasant surprise (I admit I am at the same time pursuing and abusing the sense of “surprise”). Larch trees are at their peak and, just like my last trip to the Enchantments, all the larch trees seemed to hide in a high mountain basin. This means we traveled for hours with nothing to see, but once we stepped across a threshold—the rim of the basin, suddenly we were in a different realm.

The color was so vibrant as if gold was lit on fire. Unlike the New England foliage, which I could never get enough of, the larch color is much more light dependent. Without light, it is darkish gray. As the light changes, gray changes into yellow, than an orange glow.

We thought we got what we were here for in the middle of the basin and were almost ready to turn around. Another couple coming down from the nearby summit told us enough to keep going. Thanks to them, we got much more than what we expected.

The peak of Carne was one of the high points along a mountain spine sandwiched between two huge glacier-carved valleys. Where we stood, lights from a setting sun piercing through thick clouds cast stage lights over the near end of the valley to our west. When we look out along the valley to the other end, the rolling clouds thickened and darkened, as if the valley is a gigantic pathway leading to a different world. Turning around, we saw in the shadows of clouds and ridge light, cluster of larch trees’ tip glowing like budding golden flowers. It is a scene worth the lost of sleep now, to say the least.

As I soaked myself in the view, Rachmaninoff’s second symphony got in my head, and I just couldn’t shake it off. However I think about Rachmaninoff, his music does conjure an expansive imagery. And a sense of unreserved devotion. That is how I felt at that moment – I was as naked in front of nature as it is to me. It was a wonderful feeling.

Finally finished reading Ian Frazier’s travel journal across Siberia. Loved it.

I liked “Cold Mountain” a lot, even though I usually don’t get excited with this type of romance-tragedy. For example, I know what The English Patient was trying to say, but I just didn’t feel anything afterwards. Cold Mountain, somehow, is different. The connection to “Odysseus” was unmistakable, and if the impact of that ancient epic was dormant before, Cold Mountain certainly awoke it. I was swept away.

Soon I learned that the title was named after 寒山 the poet. Although I don’t know much about Han Shan (and I still don’t. As much as I admire Frazier, I don’t think Han Shan is the same guy to me as he’s to him. So I just didn’t try), it is enough for me to pick out the Asian sentiment in Frazier’s work. And the Siberian journal is another example.

What I read in the journal was a sense of nostalgia, of attachment to the past (and present) being lost and a slight touch of homesickness. I guess for a popular Western literati, you can’t get more Asian than that. But I really appreciate his angle here: there was a parallel in the vastness of the terrain and the infinity of history. What we consider as “history” today is nothing but a narrow and crooked narrative not unlike the barely-maintained highway threading across Siberia.

Reminded me of a trip of my own. I was in Dun Huang a couple of years ago. ZR and I visited an ancient ruin called “锁阳城”. It was one of the frontier posts manned against the desert nomads since Tang Dynasty. At its peak, the walled area housed thousands of people. But when we got there, it was almost buried in sand dunes drifted south from the nearby Gobi Dessert.

A village girl came to greet us. The ruin was so remote and so little known outside of the famous mural caves, she was as lonely as the half-buried ruin in the middle of the dessert. As we walked onto the once teethed castle wall, a gust of wind whipped up. ZR and the girl stayed behind but I pressed on. At the out-most point where I stood, I could see nothing but an endless span of land that touched sky with a blurred line of horizon. Every here and there, a cyclone danced up, drifted for a while, then faded.

To my left, about less than a mile, was a half collapsed kiln-like structure. It was said to be the stupa of a once prominent Buddhist temple complex. Today, except this structure, there was nothing left. All I found after a short walk around was part of a mummified goat lightly covered by sand under a cluster of desert shrub.

Then and there, I thought I was touching the true, pristine history.

For some reason, a 苏东坡 poem popped in my head:
人生到处知何似?应似飞鸿踏雪泥。
泥上偶然留指爪,鸿飞那复计东西。
老僧已死成新塔,坏壁无由见旧题。
往日崎岖还记否,路长人困蹇驴嘶。

Things I posted somewhere else but worth recording …

Rants against Daniel Snyder and the Redskins’ front office -

Winning, to Snyder, takes too long, requires too much investment, which distracts operational focus and thus incurs too much uncertainty. That is no way to make a quick buck.

Take a minute to ask yourself, why does Snyder choose to endear himself to LaVar Arrington, or Clinton Portis, but never to his QBs? If he cares about winning, wouldn’t he bond with his franchise players first? But why LaVar and Clinton, the perennial underachievers? Does Snyder have a whole lot in common with those two dudes? Did they grow up in the ‘hood together? Or were LaVar and Clinton present at his bar mitzvah?

Or is it because those two are “characters” and their jerseys move faster than others?

Can’t you see, people?! Go ahead, call yourself a true Redskins fan and go on talking about Campbell’s throwing action or why the blocking scheme doesn’t work for Portis, if that makes you feel so much a football insider. Or go on talking about why free agency wasn’t the way to go but building from draft choice is, as if Snyder is so dumb that he still hasn’t figured it out after so many years.

In fact, every free agent he brought in is just a billboard in the stadium. Every one of you who think you have an insight to the game is just a pixel in his demographic bar chart.

Enjoy the game. Life is too short to worry about someone else’s business.

My thoughts on the financial industry, excess compensation and the cause of financial crisis:

What is the mission/nature/function of the American financial industry – to make the overall economy more efficient or constantly generating liquidity for liquidity’s sake?

Why do we need so much liquidity for the economy to function at all?

Isn’t excess liquidity the root of our over-borrowing, over-spending and speculation?

Does any one think this tax-payer funded bailout will change the financial industry’s “reason-for-being”?

Does anyone really think there exists a set of regulation that can reign in the creativity of the financiers on the Wall Street?

If I have to pay sales tax for buying a hot dog or selling a used car, why are the financial transactions not taxed? What makes selling and buying derivative contracts so beyond taxation?

For those who decry such a tax would cost every Joe investor – did Joe investor get rich from not having to pay any tax? Was he able to escape from the financial ruins for not paying any such tax?

The more I live, the older I am, the more absurd a world I feel I live in.

Remember in a Jon Lee Anderson article he described walking in a neighborhood in Kabal, Afghanistan talking to people he can barely comprehend, then a guy walks up, speaking to him in English and telling him what a nonsensical world he’s living in. Then disappeared after that. That scene left a deep impression with me, although I didn’t know why then.

Now, I feel the same way as that guy does.