Except as noted, all images copyrighted by and should be attributed to E B Hawley.
I had become many eons ago a traveling literary gnome, inquisitive about places I had and had not visited,
walking the same paths of peoples from the past, through places once grand and still grand,
photographing images that now show me the places about which I still dream . . .

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Last Day in China


Above, a photograph of my travel companion and her seven-month old baby. (Photo courtesy of Y.P.)
I will remember yesterday for as long as I live: It is special to hold a panda in one's lap. I smelled a sweet smell as I held my face near his ear, and the bamboo he decimated with his large incisors smelled as fresh as he did. The panda seemed more interested in the tender shoots that the caretaker handed to him, and yet, there seemed a certain contentment in being held by humans who could not love him any more deeply than we could feel for him and his species. And the panda seems an inept species, for they require the intervention of humans to survive and adapt to a world growing smaller. The Chinese people have stepped up to their task; I paraphrase Indira Gandhi: "The greatness of a nation is measured in how well it cares for the animals."
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Let Lovely Turn of Phrase Begin

JMHawley Gave Me a Kiss to Build a Dream On

Listen, will you? I think that . . . literature, poetry, music and love make the world go round . . . while mathematics explains things; I fill my life with them, then go walking in snowy woods.
Let us go then, you and I
like two etherized patients floating
through life, together feeling prufrockian.
DDB Jr. makes my world go 'round; during his absence, Pachelbel fills it up.
One summer I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, then through the Gulf of Finland to reach Saint Petersburg; I pursued Joseph Brodsky in its alley ways. I dream of making that two summers.
I read “Biking to Electra;” found my way in a Jaguar car, and glanced at the flashing steel grasshoppers at sunset. I’ll follow K.O.P.’s footsteps after he followed N.Scott Momaday’s; find warmth and inspiration on a rainy mountain.
Throw chinese coins for the I Ching.
Save the whales, the spotted owl, the woman in toil.
Cast a fly for trout; my memories of fly fishing under the sunny blue Colorado sky remain; I yearn to build more . . . with more trophy Browns.
Listen for the swan’s calls on the Baltic Sea. Feel KKII's joy, his arms spread wide in Yazilikaya.
Good night, Jimmy Durante, where ever you are.