My friend Jennie is visiting me on Block Island today. It’s a work day. We’re both trying to get past some form of writers’ block on our novels. But that’s no reason not to take a walk on a beautiful day. Here is what it looked like from our beach this afternoon.
Dan and I have been here on Block Island since Thursday, and just as the United States Weather Service forecasted, it’s been cloudy and occasionally foggy and rainy. It’s been beautiful, and I’m not complaining. It’s always beautiful here on the island. But the last thing we expected was any kind of color at sunset. So, imagine our surprise when…
This is a gift. This is why we’re here on the island.
This is why we human beings are here on this Earth. The planet is beautiful, and we are here for only a short time. Appreciate it. Take care of it.
After a long summer off Block Island, with travel to faraway lands, I’m beginning to yearn to be back on the island again. So I went through my archive of September photographs to see where on the western skyline the sun would be setting this time of year.
Looks like it will be setting over Sachem Pond when we return in a week or so.
This is really cool…
If Yangon (or, as we were wont to call it, Rangoon) were a fabric, it would be a fine quality one, satin with gold embroidery, a beautiful piece, but old, frayed and torn. But it would be repaired in a haphazard manner, perhaps by a person who didn’t know how to do it, or who didn’t have the needed matching threads and pieces to work with. And who, despite the fabric’s sad condition, is still using it, an old favorite.
Piranesi meets William Gibson in the ruins of the British Raj.
The main traffic circle downtown displays some of this quality: a pagoda tightly surrounded by shops in what, in Europe, would be a medieval manner. Surrounded in turn by several (four?) lanes of traffic.
But the thing that struck Dan and me the most in the downtown area of Yangon was the unusually fine heritage of British Raj-era buildings that were in an unusual–perhaps even dangerous–state of decay. And occupied anyway. This decay may have been exacerbated by the government’s removal of the capital and its accompanying administrative functions to Naypyidaw in 2005. According to at least one source, Yangon has (or had) the largest number of colonial-period buildings in southeast Asia.
Here’s one, one side of which has completely crumbled away, been overgrown by vegetation, and is still used for…something…
Here’s another.
Other buildings, whether Raj-era or not, display a similar surreal quality.
Out in the neighborhoods, the lack of infrastructure becomes apparent, but so does the vibrancy of community life.
Every apartment or condo has its own unique electric wire from the pole (rather than one larger wire to bring electricity into the building, then separating it there). This makes for interesting electrical vistas.
Not all the streets are paved. (The sidewalks are worse.)
But there are cafes…
…where friends enjoy getting together.
In the near future, I am going to begin posting a (long) series of blog entries about Dan’s and my recent trip to Singapore, Myanmar, and Cambodia. I’ve been through a first-pass edit of literally thousands of photographs, and I’m culling the best few that will give you a flavor of what the places, the people, and the activities were like, without putting you into visual overload.
So that you can get a sense of the big picture, here’s a table of contents, of sorts. I’ll start with Myanmar (Burma), move on to Cambodia, and then show Singapore. This is not the order in which we traveled. We traveled to Singapore first, then Myanmar, Cambodia, and (briefly, no pictures) Thailand. However, the order I’m using makes sense as we will move from the most removed from what we consider the “modern” world to the most modern.
Inside Myanmar, I’ll show some highlights of Yangon (Rangoon, until recently the capital) first, then Bagan (a UNESCO World Heritage site), bustling Mandalay, and the enchanting and surreal Inle Lake. Each of these may require more than one entry, so it’s going to be a longer Web journey than the actual trip. But I hope you’ll stay with me on this visual adventure!
We were on the island for a few days surrounding the summer solstice, when the sun is as far north as it gets. The first I saw of it was at 5am on June 20th, and I am delighted to share this northerly sunrise with you.
Warm late-spring days are truly magical on the island. The air is sweet with roses and Russian olive blossoms. The sun is strong and hot during the day and the stars are bright at night, but at sunrise and sunset a cool fog rises from the sea. And the elements dance: fire and air, sea and land.
Amber the Maine coon cat got a new lion cut for the summer yesterday. He looks so serious and regal, all 23 pounds of him.
Gwenny the 8-pound Russian Blue, who has lived with Amber for fourteen years, no longer recognizes him. She hisses when he comes into the same room with her. And if he’s in a room first, she won’t go in.
Why would the house still be unrented for the week of July 3-10th? This, when the week includes the July 4th holiday, with the island’s wonderful hometown parade, and with fireworks, both manmade and natural. Fireworks a lot like this:
and this:
We’ve reduced the price for the week to encourage some lucky person or group or family to come out and share the beauty of our lovely island. If anyone is interested, call Ballard Hall Real Estate at 401-466-8883.