Photographs
I was happy to see this this morning, nine days after testing positive for COVID. I’m still not feeling 100% - fatigued, that taste in my mouth - and so I’m pacing myself right now. However, I felt just well enough to pop out and pick some groceries this lunchtime. Small wins.
I’m not sure what is going on in this photo, taken in Tibet in 1995. I believe that it was taken near to Drepung Loseling Monastery and that the monastery just visible in the middle right might be Nechung Monastery, home of the Nechung Oracle. Both monasteries have been reestablished in exile in India, Nechung in Dharamsala in north India, and Drepung in the south in Kanaktaka State.
Given that it is center stage, I think that I was trying to capture the run down tractor/cart in the middle of the photo.
Another slide coming out of my evening going through old travel photos. Like yesterday’s image, this image is a photograph of a slide projected onto the wall.
The photo was taken at Drepung Loseling monastery in Lhasa, Tibet in 1995. At the time of the Chinese invasion, Drepung was the largest monastery in the world with 10,000 monks - a small town.
The picture shows my Buddhist teacher, Ven. Geshe Damcho Yonten (on the right), speaking with an old monk who had stayed behind in Tibet following the invasion. This was Geshe-la’s (as he was affectionately known) first and only visit back to Tibet having fled the country in 1959.
This photograph shows the village of Zhöl at the foot of the south wall of Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. The photograph was taken during a visit to Tibet in 1995, and is actually a photo of the original slide projected onto a wall a couple of evenings ago while I was going through pictures from my travels. I have left in the clipping in the top left so that most of Chagpori Hill can be seen. The Tibetan Medical Institute used to be on top of this hill, but was destroyed during the Chinese invasion in 1959.
I had known that Zhöl was under danger of having all its inhabitants moved out, but did not realize that this had happened. It turns out that in the summer of 1995,
the families residing in the village were evicted from their homes and resettled to the North of Lhasa. A number of buildings that were not deemed part of the monument at the time were demolished in the inner Shol while the additions comprising the outer Zhöl were razed.1
Spending this evening going through some old slides from travel back in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Emphasis on some. I have a lot of slides.
I have just made use of my step-daughter’s infrared sauna to help rest some weary muscles. Yesterday was an extremely exhausting day, while at the same time also being very satisfying, as I trimmed and leveling off our hedge under a hot sun.
Peninsular Notebooks, Porto
My analogue journaling and tracking of todo lists happens in Field Notes notebooks. Over the last couple of years I have grown to love the convenience (for me) of the size of Field Notes and occasionally will buy notebooks of a similar size but made by a different brand.
While my wife and I were in Portugal earlier this year, we visited a beautiful stationary and graphics store in the city of Porto, Peninsular. I did not document much of that trip due to my part of the visit being cut short as I had to return to the US for my Naturalization interview. However, the experience of entering Peninsular remains with me. The store was full of notebooks, pens, pencils, paper, printing presses all lovingly curated. While browsing, my wife noticed a small collection of Field Notes sized notebooks produced by Peninsular, and I bought them.
Yesterday I opened my first Peninsular notebook to start tracking my days. 📝
The Great Lakes, summer 2022 edition of Field Notes has arrived and looks beautiful.
