“Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer Those days of soda and pretzels and beer Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer” 1963 hit by Nat King Cole
I spend a lot of time going through old image files these days and recently noticed these photos from a raft race on the Oconee River running through Athens, from when I was a student at UGA. The word “carefree” came to mind. It’s such a simple word to cover so much ground. I remember life being so much more spontaneous then.
It’s been spring in Savannah for several weeks now–lots of pollen and lots of falling oak leaves, luxurious dogwood blossoms and the bright colors of azaleas exploding everywhere, and of course the blanket of green on St. Patrick’s Day. The real tip-off, though, is when the bright plumage of teenage girls in formal wear appears in Washington Square, along with the spiffed up, Bond-esque look of their escorts in rented tuxedos. It’s Prom Night, and groups of graduating seniors gather in our square every year with family–parents, siblings, grandparents–to photograph every combination of couples and groups they can imagine, before the stars of the show head to the dance.
They, all of them, are gorgeous in their party clothes, eager to go through these last few gateways to adulthood, not thinking about this likely being the last whole summer they can take off, or the hurdles and shocks the life they seek will throw at them.
I am a little envious of the often carefree adventure they are starting.
When our “Go West…” tour left Wyoming, into Utah, the landscape went from ascendant to eroding. As we continued into Arizona, the wearing away continued deep into the earth at the Grand Canyon, and in the emptiness of Monument Valley.
I think most “abstract” photography, an effort to remove or minimize objective references, is attempted by moving very close to the real world subject. Sometimes that can also be accomplished in the opposite direction, from a great distance.
The layers of color and texture represent eons, the millennia of slowly building up the sedimentary landscape, then the millennia of wearing it down, exposing the timeline. It’s easy to feel small in the American West; like the line at the end of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show:”
We now return to our boys’ “Go West Old Man” tour as they leave Wyoming and the Grand Tetons.
The overwhelming visual of the Tetons is the vertical explosion of the mountains from the valley floor. It feels strong, vigorous, and youthful. Granite and gneiss are the hard materials of that area, but heading south into Utah, that changes to softer sandstone. The landscape begins to feel weathered, tortured, then ancient, and arid.
Temperatures vary from hot day to cold night. Moisture condenses in nooks and crannies, in the slivers of niches of sedimentary rock. Freezes. Expands. Erodes. Sloughing skin. It’s easy to see things–figures, faces–in the rock, without peyote. It’s the kind of landscape that warns you there are consequences for being careless.
Mahamuni Pagoda (L) and Soon U Pon Nya Shin Paya Buddha Hall (R)
I have been curious about Burma most of my life. Dad served in the China-Burma-India theater during WW II, and growing up I read the great, true, adventure stories of Chennault and his Flying Tigers, and of Merrill’s Marauders. I finally had the chance to see it when Barbara and I visited in 2017, as the Rohingya confrontations were becoming widely known. It didn’t fit with my understanding of Buddhists that they would be a faction in a civil war, but we were never in any area where conflict was happening. People seemed warm, friendly, welcoming, but no one would engage in a conversation about the issue.
Mandalay has been called the City of Gold, because of so many shining pagodas. It is one of only two places in the world making gold leaf. The other is in Holland where the process is machined, but in Myanmar it’s still done by men swinging a sledge hammer onto a small booklet of interleaved thin gold layers all day long. That could be an indicator for how un-modern much of Myanmar is, how extensive the earthquake damage will be, and how difficult the task to recover bodies and rebuild a country that already had limited infrastructure, and, likely, fluid building codes, not to mention an ongoing civil war, and a xenophobic military government.
Called the Soft Gold Pagoda, Mahamuni Pagoda’s face is washed daily and no gold is ever placed on it, but since the early 1900’s the statue has grown substantially from the constant application of gold leaf everywhere else, approximately 2 tons. Reports and photographs of the earthquake damage are limited for now and probably anytime soon, but one story I saw said 270 monks were assembled here at the time for some testing; now 80 are dead and 100 are missing, thought buried in the rubble. It’s bound to be much worse. The well-visited monument is only a few feet from an entrance to a large shopping mall, modern looking but almost certainly built in layers over a century of evolution.
On Sagaing Hill, overlooking the Irrawaddy River, Soon U Pon Shin Paya, with it’s Buddha Hall and gilded stupa, at the epicenter of the 7.7 magnitude quake, is closed. There are online photos of the decapitated stupa.
Mandalay Palace (L) and Soon U Pon Shin Paya stupa (R)
Barbara’s relative tallness and blonde hair attracts attention when we are traveling in Asia, and it’s not unusual for a woman, or group of women, to approach her for a photograph with her, as was the case here. If Barbara looks a little splotchy, it’s a local makeup custom that looks liked dried clay. The Palace area had substantial damage; the Clock Tower and Relic Tower are collapsed.
Kutho Daw Pagoda
Near Mandalay Palace, Kutho Daw Pagoda, the “World’s Largest Book,” is 729 inscribed marble slabs, each in its own small stupa, presenting the entire 15 books of the Tripitaka, built between 1860 and 1868. You don’t have to know what that is (the teachings of Buddha) to appreciate the human achievement in building such an extensive monument. It is reported damaged.
Losing beautiful centuries old structures is a terrible thing, but the real tragedy is the thousands who will ultimately be destitute, injured, missing or dead.
