Tag Archives: Kanji

Nature’s Calligraphy

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As you drive along the Mississippi river near Lacrosse, Wisconsin you will pass along the blue stone cliffs that line the river bank. There is barely room for the highway between the cliffs and the river’s edge. You must stop and get out of your car to see the cliffs in their full glory.

The foliage that grows on the cliff face ranges from full-grown trees to shrubs and small plants, and were carefully chosen by nature to fit harmoniously into this picture. Being Wisconsin and being Fall every single color imaginable was trotted out for your amazement. For those among you who have to say “Those colors aren’t real. He must have Photoshopped that.” You’re right I did. I didn’t add any colors but I sure as hell enhanced that red. It was more than red enough but there was something about the way it contrasted with the blue of the stone that I loved, so I kept bringing out more red and more red, and more until there you have it. Red. Like tons of it. I was younger then. And besotted with the incredible range of colors that are so different from my home in the west. I take full responsibility for it. So to those of you purists out there who feel somewhat vindicated that you called me on the red and some of the other colors too, I can only say ” Yeah, I did it, Deal with it.” If you can’t and it just makes you crazy I say “OK you’ve made your point . Move along here. There’s nothing more to see. Thanks for stopping by.”

After looking at this picture for years, it was actually taken back in 2003, it dawned on me that it looked like calligraphy. The red plants forming the Kanji that says something undecipherable. A message from Mother Nature herself. Maybe it says something like “Beauty resides here, look and be in awe” or perhaps “Red is the color of love and life and good fortune. Be at one with it.”  or possibly “Return Hotel Bicycles to rack on Red street, or Tremble and Be Ashamed.” We’ll never know as this particular phrase has never been translated. I’m going with the first one, I think, the beauty resides here, one. That works the best for me.

Temporary Tattoos

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It is now the accepted thing to permanently decorate your skin with a design etched into its surface with ink. These are called “tats”  or “Ink” or even “Tattoos” by those who aren’t quite with it. That would be anyone over 60 or someone raised by weasels deep in the forest. The design can be anything, from tiny little flowers and butterflies placed delicately on one’s ankle to raging south sea islander markings that cover half of one’s body. There is a trend towards getting words in Asian languages that say things like peace and tranquility in Kanji symbols. There was a story where one hapless soul wanted to get the symbol for love placed on a prominent portion of his body and when he had the resulting tattoo translated later found that it actually said “Hotel Bicycle”.

There was also a well-endowed lady who thought it would be cute as well as necessary to identify her prized possessions by placing the words “Left” and “Right” on them, of course the labels got placed on the opposite ones but apparently her need for attention got answered as she spends most of her time now explaining the situation.
What separates a spammer from a regular marketer is the way that they acquire mail addresses to mail to and how they send the mails. 

Nature has been creating tattoos for a very long time, but hers are usually temporary and transitory. Using dappled sunlight filtered through the canopy of the trees above she places the delicate tracery of leaves on a set of boulders. The stream sends its flow over the rocks surface in a vain attempt to wash them away but it is a futile gesture. Later when she is bored with her work or turns her attention to other pursuit’s the design will fade and be gone. Since there is a lot of ‘skin’ for her to work on there will be never be a shortage of new work for us to see and wonder at.

This design appeared at a small creek that found its way down the mountain next to Old Fall River Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. You can see it and many more like it anytime the sun is out.

Grace and Tranquility

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Grace and Tranquility are recent graduates of Swan Training School and are back in Yellowstone National park as new members of swan society. Their job is to swim the quiet rivers of the park, displaying all the qualities of mature young adults, preening, posing gently in the smooth backwaters of the river bends, projecting an air of beauty and refinement you’ve come to expect from swans.

Those of you who are quick studies will notice that Grace is doing what she was trained to do but Tranquility, her classmate, seems to be missing. This is unfortunate because swans, although beautiful when seen alone are of course doubly beautiful when displayed in pairs and the normal procedure would be for the two of them to show up at their appointed places and work the river together.

It seems that Tranquility, always a willful child had a few problems at Swan Training school and nearly missed her graduation due to some disciplinary problems. A quick note here. Sometime, back around the first of last year, we at The Institute made a startling discovery of the existence of the Swan Training School and wrote about it after infiltrating the school to get the inside story of how young swans are made. You can read about it here http://www.bigshotsnow.com/2014/01/17/ . The training we found was harsh and rigorous. It’s a difficult road for young swans and the molding process used at the school is designed to break down individuality and force a form of collective thinking that produces a “Finished Swan”. Many make it through but some don’t. Tranquility was one that had some trouble.

. The training nuns of Our Sisters of the Immaculate Plumage, the nuns who run the school, despaired of Tranquility ever being able to graduate. They were quite firm with her and found her resistant to many of the aspects of swan training despite the measures used to get her “to get her mind right”. Finally they resorted to extreme training procedures, ones similar to those used in a large celebrity religion where there was shunning coupled with intense group crisis intervention methods, until nearly at her breaking point Tranquility agreed to be a “Good” swan. Nervous but convinced they had reached her, the nuns of the Fallen Plumage allowed her to graduate.

One of the events the recently graduated swans look forward to is Spring Break. They’re allowed to spend the two weeks prior to reporting for swan duty to attend the mass gathering of all the young swans at Padre Island and there enjoy the fellowship of their peers, laughing and singing and frolicking in the Texas sun. Being young swans they are expected to comport themselves in a manner that reflects well on swandom in general, which of course most of them do. But then there’s Tranquility.

It was a bad idea to send Tranquility on Spring Break. She fell in with some bad swans. Some really bad swans. Swans that had gone to Spring Break several years ago and never left. Once Tranquility met these kindred souls there was no looking back. Grace did her best to try and convince her to return and take up her life as a Yellowstone swan but her entreaties fell on deaf ears, Tranquility had found her place. Grace left soon after, winging her way back north until she reached the Yellowstone river, assuming her place as a  resident swan in a quiet stretch of river as it flows through the Hayden valley.

Tranquility on the other hand is still down at Padre. She works part-time in an Ink shop called the Quill and Skin pushing tats on unsuspecting young swans who will probably never make it back to their places either. She is very different appearing now and her ex-classmates and the nuns who taught her would never recognize her. She has dyed her wings feathers an emerald-green on one side and fire engine red on the other. Her peers have named her Traffic Stopper. Her long neck is shaven down one side to better display the Kanji tattooed there, the symbols supposedly saying her name, Tranquility, but due to a session with a drunken tattoo artist they say Hotel Bicycle instead. This was pointed out to her, but high on several prescription pain killers she simply shook her beak rings in irritation and went on her way. To her they will always say Tranquility.

Grace on the other hand can still be found at that very wide bend in the river, the one near Mt Mary trail, arriving every spring to take up her place and display the beauty and of course the grace of swans. She thinks of Tranquility often, wondering what her life is like now, but hasn’t had any contact with her since that fateful trip graduation year. Tranquility has been invited to the 3 and 5 year reunions held at the swan school but so far has not responded to any of them. The nuns presume her lost.