Today is Workers’ Day, and I’ll take the day off. I have a conference call in the evening, and I am planning future adventures, but for the afternoon I’ll just rest, read a book, listen to some music.
We need time to recharge our batteries.
I leave you with some nice music.
Have fun!
Song of the drunken fishermen
More classic Chinese music for the evening – and considering it’s almost 8 pm and we are preparing a light dinner of fish, a song called Drunken fishermen singing in the sunset is perfectly right.
Enjoy!
A story a day, for a month … what could ever go wrong?
Let it be known that it is all my friend Claire’s fault.
Me, I was minding my own business, trying to type faster and close as soon as possible all the works I have hanging and…
Really, it’s her fault!
But over at her blog Scribblings, Clare wrote about this thing called #StoryADayMay, the brainchild of writer Julie Duffy.
Basically, they send you a prompt every day, and you write a story.
As simple as that.
And I thought… why not?
Type faster
One of the things we normally do not pause to consider is that, in most post-apocalyptic fiction – be it an after-the-bomb movie or a zombie plague comic or a novel about a killer virus leading to the collapse of Western civilization – we are, most likely, dead.
The thought struck me a long time ago, watching a movie in which, after some unnamed catastrophe, the main characters walked over a field of sun-bleached skeletons, the victims of that ancient whatever. And I thought, that’s probably me, the one whose skull’s just been crushed under the boot of the hero.
A few hours ago the news came – through Facebook, of all things – that the first COVID-19 case has been reported here in the village where I live.
Continue readingChang’an Again
Considering the relative success of my previous post about the music of of ancient China and Guqin, here’s another sample of these guy’s art.
I hope you’ll like it.
The things they carried
Just when you thought things could not get any crazier, I got the news that an Alaska school board removed five “controversial” books from district classrooms. And now I still remember when Tarzan books were removed from libraries for promoting running naked in the jungle and living together outside of wedlock.
But in this case, the books are not pulp adventures, as the “controversial” titles are
- “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
- “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller
- “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
- “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
And it is weird, because I got the news just as I was preparing a post about The Things They Carried for my Italian blog.
Continue readingChang’an Fantasia
I’ve just discovered this band, and I think it will provide the soundtrack for my writing in the next few days.
Enjoy!
(and yes, as the video says, it’s by far better if you use stereo headphones)
Karavansara 