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The Best Snorkeling in the World

+ June 23, 2011 + + +

Nusa Lembongan is only a few miles off the southwestern coast of Bali, but it might as well be another universe. Here there are few people and no cars, only a few motorbikes that navigate the narrow dirt roads, none more than two meters wide, and your own feet are the dominant way to get around. There's still tourism, but there's also a local fishing and seaweed industry.

From Ubud we caught a bus south to Sanur, a beachside town where we thought we might spend a night or two. Unimpressed by the trash strewn beaches and overpriced resorts we went ahead and caught the afternoon boat out to Nusa Lembongan, one of three small islands off the coast of southwest Bali.

The pace here is more my speed. Little seems to happen. People work. People fly kites. People eat. People sit in the shade.

Most of Lembongan's inhabitants are seaweed farmers. At low tide dozens of farmers make their way down to the shoreline where they load their partially dried seaweed in small outriggers and flat-bottomed boats which they pole out through the shallows to the seaweed fields that line the inland the edge of the reef half a mile from shore. At low tide the seaweed plots are often above the waterline, and even at high tide the expanse of water between the shore and reef is rarely more than a meter deep.

While the farmers are out planting and harvesting seaweed (most of which I'm told ends up in Japan, used as a binding agent in various cosmetics), old women walk the shallows gathering up dropped bits of seaweed or prowl the shoreline plucking worms -- which are sold as fish bait back on Bali -- from the wet sand.

In the evenings, when the sun dips into the clouds and the air begins to cool, the villagers come down to the beach to fly kites in the evening breeze. Kites are something of an obsession for the Balinese, nearly everyone has a kite and you see dozens littering the sky from any vantage point on the island. There are fewer kites here on Lembongan, but only because there are fewer people here.

These are not the kites you grew up with, small triangular affairs with a bit of ribbon on the tail and a few meters of string. Balinese kites are massive, some with tails hundreds of meters long and they fly them so high the government had to ban them around the Denpasar airport for fear they would clog the engines of 747s. The Balinese are serious about their kites.

Of course flying kites is fun too, but there's also a religious aspect stemming from the belief that the Indian god Indra was a kite flying aficionado. Legend holds that Indra taught local farmers how to fly kites and today the Balinese believe the kites to be whispered prayers to the gods, which explains why they fly them so high (well, that and the fact that actually getting a kite 200-300 meters in the air is just cool).

While Lembongan is a relaxing place to pass a few days, or even weeks, the main appeal of the island for most visitors is either the surfing or the snorkeling (and diving, but I've never had the patience or desire to learn how to dive, the vast majority of what I find interesting in the ocean is in the first 3 meters of water anyway). I went on two snorkeling trips out of Lembongan, neither of which spent much time at Lembongan's reefs, opting for the far superior reefs around the two neighboring islands, tiny Nusa Ceningan and the much larger Nusa Penida.

The first stop was a mediocre reef just off the dense mangrove forests of Nusa Lembongan. The reef was okay, but the water was murky and crowded with a dozen other boats also dropping snorkelers. After maybe ten minutes in the water the two Australians also on the trip and I asked the boatman if there was anything better to be found. He kept saying drift snorkel, which left us scratching our heads, but we agreed and set off for another ten minute boat ride to the eastern coast of Nusa Penida.

The backside of Nusa Penida is separated from its much smaller neighbor, Nusa Ceningan by a narrow swath of water maybe a kilometer across at its widest. To the south is the open ocean, to the north is the Lombok straight, a very strong current that moves between Bali and Lombok at speeds of up to eight knots. The shallow reef-covered shelfs just off Nusa Penida, have similar currents where the water is suddenly forced through the narrow channel between islands.

Drift snorkeling is a bit like snorkeling in a river. The boat drops you off at one end of the current and you drift for a couple of kilometers down to the end of the current, where the island swings to the west and there's a small beach where the boat can pick you up again.

In the mean time you drift, like tubing down a river. The shoreline is a limestone cliff, carved inward by the sea. Underwater a shelf slopes off sharply. The first tier is maybe two meters, the second more like four and then finally the shelf drops off into the unknown deep, a rich turquoise blue that is alive with fish. Fish I have previously seen perhaps two or three at a time are swimming in massive schools. Dozens of Moorish Idols, schools of deep purple tangs, so dark they look black until you get up close, parrotfish in clusters, munching on the coral, bright, powder blue tangs, yellow-masked angelfish, countless butterfly fish, wrasses, triggerfish, pufferfish and even bright blue starfish that crawl slowly over the reef. The deep blue depths are filled with myriad triggerfish, angelfish, clownfish and hundreds of others swimming slowly along in the current. There are huge schools of fish that I have only previously seen in books or aquariums back in the States. In fact there are so many fish that just last month a survey done not far from here discovered eight new species of fish.

And I just drift along, occasionally kicking to slow down. Drift snorkeling is like watching fish float by the window of an underwater train. When something catches my eye, like a massive, meter-long lobster tucked back in a small cave of jagged limestone and red brown coral, I kick as hard as I can simply to stay in place and watch.

All too soon it is over. I am too amazed by what is without a doubt the best snorkeling I've ever done to even ask if we can do it again. Only some time later, as the boat rounds the corner of Lembongan and begins the treacherous journey back through the seaweed farm shallows, does it occur to me that perhaps we could have asked for another drift. But by then it is too late, and perhaps it would be too greedy, too much all at once, to do it twice in a row.

I am, however, a greedy person, so the next day I signed on to another snorkeling trip, this time out to Manta Point to see the namesake Manta Rays. This time it's a much longer boat ride all the way around to the southern shores of Nusa Penida. Contrary to what you might think, the waters of Indonesia are not particularly warm, so long boat rides mean a lot of chilly salt spray, and, despite the name, I was not optimistic about our chances of seeing any Manta Rays. But I was wrong.

When we arrive there are a half a dozen of the huge creatures, with their massive rippling wings, circling around a cove, surrounded by shear limestone cliffs. The water is rough, three foot swells blow in from the south, breaking against the cliffs, but in spite of the slight murkiness, it's impossible to miss the Manta Rays. Mantas are massive things, more than a meter across and at least as long, they don't so much swim as fly, slowly flapping their wings through the water with a sense of timing and grace that few animals possess. There is something hypnotic about their movements.

Once again I simply floated, bobbing about on the surface of the sea, beaten around a bit by the swell, while the mantas rather gracefully swam through, under and around us, like some proud eagles investigating these curious new onlookers. The rays themselves are so massive, so foreign in shape that it takes some time to come to terms with them. You think at first that they have no eyes. Or no eyes where you might think there should be eyes. Their bodies are black and it is difficult to make out the eyes -- which are also black -- amidst the darkness of their skin, but then some ray of sunlight breaks through the choppy water and you see the unmistakable glint of a dark eyeball, not at all where you thought it might be and then it dawns on you that they have been watching you all this time, never doubting for a moment where your eyes are. And then the way they have been swimming, the curious pattern of back and forth, becomes clear and you realize these are not simply fish, but something else, something very curious, inquisitive even. They swim at you head on, slowing as they approach, as if they are perhaps near sighted and need a closer look at your floating form, and then they dive about three feet down and slide under you. Once they are clear of you they turn around and repeat the process. Sometimes I dive under them, watching from below as their vast white bellies move overhead, white wings beating slowly, rhythmically through the water.

Mantas are creatures of great grace, they move with poise, like underwater dancers, slowly flapping their way through the depths. If you ever have opportunity to swim with mantas don't pass it up there is little else in the world like it.

After a half hour or so with the Mantas we head back, stopping off at Crystal Bay, which doesn't have as many fish as the drift snorkeling area, but has never been fished using dynamite or cyanide -- two coral-destroying problems that have ruined many a reef in Asia -- and has more coral and intact reef than anywhere else I've been.

We spent a mere four days on Lembongan, but in hindsight it was worth much more. In fact, we should probably still be there, since where we went afterward was truly awful, but that's traveling, you never know what's up around the corner -- sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, you never know until you arrive. I feel lucky to have enjoyed Nusa Lembongan and its neighbors while I had the chance.

Note: Sadly, I don't have a waterproof camera, so all the underwater images above were taken by others. The school fish along the shelf and the flish in the coral are both by Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten, Flickr. The blue starfish image comes from Stephane Bailliez, Flickr and the manta ray image is by Motoya Kawasaki, Flickr. All are reproduced under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law.

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/best-snorkeling-world.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/best-snorkeling-world.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8f28262 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/best-snorkeling-world.html @@ -0,0 +1,552 @@ + + + + + The Best Snorkeling In The World - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

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Home → + +
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The Best Snorkeling in the World

In my experience of the world anyway

Nusa Lembongan, Bali, Indonesia

+ – Map +

+ June 23, 2011 + +

Nusa Lembongan is only a few miles off the southwestern coast of Bali, but it might as well be another universe. Here there are few people and no cars, only a few motorbikes that navigate the narrow dirt roads, none more than two meters wide, and your own feet are the dominant way to get around. There’s still tourism, but there’s also a local fishing and seaweed industry.

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Nusa Lembongen, Indonesia photographed by luxagraf

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The pace here is more my speed. Little seems to happen. People work. People fly kites. People eat. People sit in the shade.

Most of Lembongan’s inhabitants are seaweed farmers. At low tide dozens of farmers make their way down to the shoreline where they load their partially dried seaweed in small outriggers and flat-bottomed boats which they pole out through the shallows to the seaweed fields that line the inland the edge of the reef half a mile from shore. At low tide the seaweed plots are often above the waterline, and even at high tide the expanse of water between the shore and reef is rarely more than a meter deep.

+ +

While the farmers are out planting and harvesting seaweed (most of which I’m told ends up in Japan, used as a binding agent in various cosmetics), old women walk the shallows gathering up dropped bits of seaweed or prowl the shoreline plucking worms — which are sold as fish bait back on Bali — from the wet sand.

Flying kites is fun too, but there’s also a religious aspect stemming from the belief that the Indian god Indra was a kite flying aficionado. Legend holds that Indra taught local farmers how to fly kites and today the Balinese believe the kites to be whispered prayers to the gods, which explains why they fly them so high (well, that and the fact that actually getting a kite 200-300 meters in the air is just cool).

While Lembongan is a relaxing place to pass a few days, or even weeks, the main appeal of the island for most visitors is either the surfing or the snorkeling (and diving, but I’ve never had the patience or desire to learn how to dive, the vast majority of what I find interesting in the ocean is in the first 3 meters of water anyway). I went on two snorkeling trips out of Lembongan, neither of which spent much time at Lembongan’s reefs, opting for the far superior reefs around the two neighboring islands, tiny Nusa Ceningan and the much larger Nusa Penida.

The first stop was a mediocre reef off the dense mangrove forests of Nusa Lembongan. The reef was okay, but the water was murky and crowded with a dozen other boats also dropping snorkelers. After maybe ten minutes in the water the two Australians also on the trip and I asked the boatman if there was anything better to be found. He kept saying drift snorkel, which left us scratching our heads, but we agreed and set off for another ten minute boat ride to the eastern coast of Nusa Penida.

Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image by Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten, Flickr photographed by stef bemba, Flickr — image by stef bemba, Flickr

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Drift snorkeling is a bit like snorkeling in a river. The boat drops you off at one end of the current and you drift for a couple of kilometers down to the end of the current, where the island swings to the west and there’s a small beach where the boat can pick you up again.

Fish and reef off Nusa Lembongan, Bali. Image photographed by Stephane Bailliez, Flickr — image by Stephane Bailliez, Flickr

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underwater purple fish, Nusa Lembongen, Indonesia photographed by Yuxuan Wang, Flickr — image by Yuxuan Wang, Flickr

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All too soon it is over. I am too amazed by what is without a doubt the best snorkeling I’ve ever done to even ask if we can do it again. Only some time later, as the boat rounds the corner of Lembongan and begins the treacherous journey back through the seaweed farm shallows, does it occur to me that perhaps we could have asked for another drift. But by then it is too late, and perhaps it would be too greedy, too much all at once, to do it twice in a row.

I am, however, a greedy person, so the next day I signed on to another snorkeling trip, this time out to Manta Point to see the namesake Manta Rays. This time it’s a much longer boat ride all the way around to the southern shores of Nusa Penida. Contrary to what you might think, the waters of Indonesia are not particularly warm, so long boat rides mean a lot of chilly salt spray, and, despite the name, I was not optimistic about our chances of seeing any Manta Rays. But I was wrong.

When we arrive there are a half a dozen of the huge creatures, with their massive rippling wings, circling around a cove, surrounded by shear limestone cliffs. The water is rough, three foot swells blow in from the south, breaking against the cliffs, but in spite of the slight murkiness, it’s impossible to miss the Manta Rays. Mantas are massive things, more than a meter across and at least as long, they don’t so much swim as fly, slowly flapping their wings through the water with a sense of timing and grace that few animals possess. There is something hypnotic about their movements.

Once again I simply floated, bobbing about on the surface of the sea, beaten around a bit by the swell, while the mantas rather gracefully swam through, under and around us, like some proud eagles investigating these curious new onlookers. The rays themselves are so massive, so foreign in shape that it takes some time to come to terms with them. You think at first that they have no eyes. Or no eyes where you might think there should be eyes. Their bodies are black and it is difficult to make out the eyes — which are also black — amidst the darkness of their skin, but then some ray of sunlight breaks through the choppy water and you see the unmistakable glint of a dark eyeball, not at all where you thought it might be and then it dawns on you that they have been watching you all this time, never doubting for a moment where your eyes are. And then the way they have been swimming, the curious pattern of back and forth, becomes clear and you realize these are not simply fish, but something else, something very curious, inquisitive even. They swim at you head on, slowing as they approach, as if they are perhaps near sighted and need a closer look at your floating form, and then they dive about three feet down and slide under you. Once they are clear of you they turn around and repeat the process. Sometimes I dive under them, watching from below as their vast white bellies move overhead, white wings beating slowly, rhythmically through the water.

None photographed by Motoya Kawasaki, Flickr — image by Motoya Kawasaki, Flickr

+ +

Mantas are creatures of great grace, they move with poise, like underwater dancers, slowly flapping their way through the depths. If you ever have opportunity to swim with mantas don’t pass it up there is little else in the world like it.

After a half hour or so with the Mantas we head back, stopping off at Crystal Bay, which doesn’t have as many fish as the drift snorkeling area, but has never been fished using dynamite or cyanide — two coral-destroying problems that have ruined many a reef in Asia — and has more coral and intact reef than anywhere else I’ve been.

We spent a mere four days on Lembongan, but in hindsight it was worth much more. In fact, we should probably still be there, since where we went afterward was truly awful, but that’s traveling, you never know what’s up around the corner — sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, you never know until you arrive. I feel lucky to have enjoyed Nusa Lembongan and its neighbors while I had the chance.

Note: Sadly, I don’t have a waterproof camera, so all the underwater images above were taken by others and are credited beneath the image. Many thanks to those who share their images under a creative commons license.

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7 Comments

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+ Jie hui + August 13, 2015 at 11:19 a.m. +

+ +

Hello from Singapore!

I am planning to visit Nusa Lembongan / Nusa Penida for snorkeling this coming September. Your experience sounds surreal! Would you share where you booked the trip from? Did you do it online or at the island itself? Any tips on what should we look out for when sourcing for packages? :) thank you in advance!

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+ Scott + August 13, 2015 at 11:43 a.m. +

+ +

Jie hui-

Unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the guide, but I booked it through the hotel we were staying at, which was the Puri Nusa:

Lembonganhotels.com

For the drift snorkling, just tell them that’s what you want to do, as far as I know where I went was the only place to do that.

The main thing with the mantas is to ask to go to “Manta Point” or sometimes Manta Cove. Pretty much all the guides should know what you’re talking about though.

As for what to watch out for, I suppose there are con artists everywhere, but I didn’t really hear any bad stories or anything while I was there. I think so long as you negotiate everything before hand and are clear on where you want to go (or just what you want to do) you should be fine.

Hope that helps, if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

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+ Brian + December 28, 2015 at 11:31 p.m. +

+ +

Thanks for the great article! I am planning a holiday to Bali and want to try this drift snorkeling. I’m a little confused though, was this done in the narrow water way inbetween Nusa Ceningan and Nusa Penida or on the east side of Nusa Penida?

Thanks again for sharing!

Brian

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+ Scott + December 29, 2015 at 11:41 a.m. +

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@Brian-

It’s been a while, but I believe we jumped in about halfway along that narrow water way between Nusa Ceningan and Nusa Penida and then the current pulled us northeast tracing the curve of Nusa Penida.

I can’t really tell the exact location on Google Maps but I know there were some high cliffs so I’m guessing it was around what Google labels as Gamat Bay, probably just to the north of that.

map

Hope that helps, have a great trip.

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+ Mary-Anne + October 24, 2016 at 6:35 a.m. +

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Thanks for sharing your great snorkelling adventures! I am not a very confident swimmer but love snorkelling. Do you think the drift snorkel would be safe for a relatively novice snorkeller? Ie can you get swamped by waves for extended periods? Thanks, Mary-Anne

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+ Scott + October 24, 2016 at 9:14 a.m. +

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@Mary-Anne

There were no real waves where I was, some small chop from wind but that was about it. I would say it’s generally safe for a novice, but of course it would really depend on the exact circumstances, wind, tides, currents, tour operators, etc.

Wear a flotation device and if you’re not completely comfortable with a situation don’t hesitate to stay on the boat.

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+ test + May 02, 2017 at 11:05 a.m. +

+ +

Hello, I enjoy reading all of your post. I like +to write a little comment to support you.

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+ + +

+ +

Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

+ +

All comments are moderated, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice.

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+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/best-snorkeling-world.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/best-snorkeling-world.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ab69d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/best-snorkeling-world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,64 @@ +The Best Snorkeling in the World +================================ + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Thursday, 23 June 2011 + +Nusa Lembongan is only a few miles off the southwestern coast of Bali, but it might as well be another universe. Here there are few people and no cars, only a few motorbikes that navigate the narrow dirt roads, none more than two meters wide, and your own feet are the dominant way to get around. There's still tourism, but there's also a local fishing and seaweed industry. + +

+ +From Ubud we caught a bus south to Sanur, a beachside town where we thought we might spend a night or two. Unimpressed by the trash strewn beaches and overpriced resorts we went ahead and caught the afternoon boat out to Nusa Lembongan, one of three small islands off the coast of southwest Bali. + +The pace here is more my speed. Little seems to happen. People work. People fly kites. People eat. People sit in the shade. + +Most of Lembongan's inhabitants are seaweed farmers. At low tide dozens of farmers make their way down to the shoreline where they load their partially dried seaweed in small outriggers and flat-bottomed boats which they pole out through the shallows to the seaweed fields that line the inland the edge of the reef half a mile from shore. At low tide the seaweed plots are often above the waterline, and even at high tide the expanse of water between the shore and reef is rarely more than a meter deep. + +

+ +While the farmers are out planting and harvesting seaweed (most of which I'm told ends up in Japan, used as a binding agent in various cosmetics), old women walk the shallows gathering up dropped bits of seaweed or prowl the shoreline plucking worms -- which are sold as fish bait back on Bali -- from the wet sand. + +In the evenings, when the sun dips into the clouds and the air begins to cool, the villagers come down to the beach to fly kites in the evening breeze. Kites are something of an obsession for the Balinese, nearly everyone has a kite and you see dozens littering the sky from any vantage point on the island. There are fewer kites here on Lembongan, but only because there are fewer people here. + +These are not the kites you grew up with, small triangular affairs with a bit of ribbon on the tail and a few meters of string. Balinese kites are massive, some with tails hundreds of meters long and they fly them so high the government had to ban them around the Denpasar airport for fear they would clog the engines of 747s. The Balinese are serious about their kites. + +Flying kites is fun too, but there's also a religious aspect stemming from the belief that the Indian god Indra was a kite flying aficionado. Legend holds that Indra taught local farmers how to fly kites and today the Balinese believe the kites to be whispered prayers to the gods, which explains why they fly them so high (well, that and the fact that actually getting a kite 200-300 meters in the air is just cool). + +While Lembongan is a relaxing place to pass a few days, or even weeks, the main appeal of the island for most visitors is either the surfing or the snorkeling (and diving, but I've never had the patience or desire to learn how to dive, the vast majority of what I find interesting in the ocean is in the first 3 meters of water anyway). I went on two snorkeling trips out of Lembongan, neither of which spent much time at Lembongan's reefs, opting for the far superior reefs around the two neighboring islands, tiny Nusa Ceningan and the much larger Nusa Penida. + +The first stop was a mediocre reef off the dense mangrove forests of Nusa Lembongan. The reef was okay, but the water was murky and crowded with a dozen other boats also dropping snorkelers. After maybe ten minutes in the water the two Australians also on the trip and I asked the boatman if there was anything better to be found. He kept saying drift snorkel, which left us scratching our heads, but we agreed and set off for another ten minute boat ride to the eastern coast of Nusa Penida. + +

+ +The backside of Nusa Penida is separated from its much smaller neighbor, Nusa Ceningan by a narrow swath of water maybe a kilometer across at its widest. To the south is the open ocean, to the north is the Lombok straight, a very strong current that moves between Bali and Lombok at speeds of up to eight knots. The shallow reef-covered shelfs just off Nusa Penida, have similar currents where the water is suddenly forced through the narrow channel between islands. + +Drift snorkeling is a bit like snorkeling in a river. The boat drops you off at one end of the current and you drift for a couple of kilometers down to the end of the current, where the island swings to the west and there's a small beach where the boat can pick you up again. + +

+ +In the mean time you drift, like tubing down a river. The shoreline is a limestone cliff, carved inward by the sea. Underwater a shelf slopes off sharply. The first tier is maybe two meters, the second more like four and then finally the shelf drops off into the unknown deep, a rich turquoise blue that is alive with fish. Fish I have previously seen perhaps two or three at a time are swimming in massive schools. Dozens of Moorish Idols, schools of deep purple tangs, so dark they look black until you get up close, parrotfish in clusters, munching on the coral, bright, powder blue tangs, yellow-masked angelfish, countless butterfly fish, wrasses, triggerfish, pufferfish and even bright blue starfish that crawl slowly over the reef. The deep blue depths are filled with myriad triggerfish, angelfish, clownfish and hundreds of others swimming slowly along in the current. There are huge schools of fish that I have only previously seen in books or aquariums back in the States. In fact there are so many fish that just last month a survey done not far from here [discovered eight new species of fish](https://phys.org/news/2011-05-reef-fish-indonesia-bali.htm://phys.org/news/2011-05-reef-fish-indonesia-bali.html). + +

+ +And I just drift along, occasionally kicking to slow down. Drift snorkeling is like watching fish float by the window of an underwater train. When something catches my eye, like a massive, meter-long lobster tucked back in a small cave of jagged limestone and red brown coral, I kick as hard as I can simply to stay in place and watch. + +All too soon it is over. I am too amazed by what is without a doubt the best snorkeling I've ever done to even ask if we can do it again. Only some time later, as the boat rounds the corner of Lembongan and begins the treacherous journey back through the seaweed farm shallows, does it occur to me that perhaps we could have asked for another drift. But by then it is too late, and perhaps it would be too greedy, too much all at once, to do it twice in a row. + +I am, however, a greedy person, so the next day I signed on to another snorkeling trip, this time out to Manta Point to see the namesake Manta Rays. This time it's a much longer boat ride all the way around to the southern shores of Nusa Penida. Contrary to what you might think, the waters of Indonesia are not particularly warm, so long boat rides mean a lot of chilly salt spray, and, despite the name, I was not optimistic about our chances of seeing any Manta Rays. But I was wrong. + +When we arrive there are a half a dozen of the huge creatures, with their massive rippling wings, circling around a cove, surrounded by shear limestone cliffs. The water is rough, three foot swells blow in from the south, breaking against the cliffs, but in spite of the slight murkiness, it's impossible to miss the Manta Rays. Mantas are massive things, more than a meter across and at least as long, they don't so much swim as fly, slowly flapping their wings through the water with a sense of timing and grace that few animals possess. There is something hypnotic about their movements. + +Once again I simply floated, bobbing about on the surface of the sea, beaten around a bit by the swell, while the mantas rather gracefully swam through, under and around us, like some proud eagles investigating these curious new onlookers. The rays themselves are so massive, so foreign in shape that it takes some time to come to terms with them. You think at first that they have no eyes. Or no eyes where you might think there should be eyes. Their bodies are black and it is difficult to make out the eyes -- which are also black -- amidst the darkness of their skin, but then some ray of sunlight breaks through the choppy water and you see the unmistakable glint of a dark eyeball, not at all where you thought it might be and then it dawns on you that they have been watching you all this time, never doubting for a moment where your eyes are. And then the way they have been swimming, the curious pattern of back and forth, becomes clear and you realize these are not simply fish, but something else, something very curious, inquisitive even. They swim at you head on, slowing as they approach, as if they are perhaps near sighted and need a closer look at your floating form, and then they dive about three feet down and slide under you. Once they are clear of you they turn around and repeat the process. Sometimes I dive under them, watching from below as their vast white bellies move overhead, white wings beating slowly, rhythmically through the water. + +

+ +Mantas are creatures of great grace, they move with poise, like underwater dancers, slowly flapping their way through the depths. If you ever have opportunity to swim with mantas don't pass it up there is little else in the world like it. + +After a half hour or so with the Mantas we head back, stopping off at Crystal Bay, which doesn't have as many fish as the drift snorkeling area, but has never been fished using dynamite or cyanide -- two coral-destroying problems that have ruined many a reef in Asia -- and has more coral and intact reef than anywhere else I've been. + +We spent a mere four days on Lembongan, but in hindsight it was worth much more. In fact, we should probably still be there, since where we went afterward was truly awful, but that's traveling, you never know what's up around the corner -- sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, you never know until you arrive. I feel lucky to have enjoyed Nusa Lembongan and its neighbors while I had the chance. + +

Note: Sadly, I don't have a waterproof camera, so all the underwater images above were taken by others and are credited beneath the image. Many thanks to those who share their images under a creative commons license.

diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/cooking-rome.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/cooking-rome.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..46215fe --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/cooking-rome.amp @@ -0,0 +1,192 @@ + + + + + + +Cooking in Rome + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Cooking in Rome

+ June 14, 2011 + + +

Rome exists on a scope that I've never encountered before in a city. It's big and massively spread out. There's really no downtown and everything you might want to see is miles from wherever you are. And it has all the attendant traffic, noise and confusion of humanity you would expect from a big city. It also spans several millennia of history with ancient Roman ruins butted up against Gucci and Armani stores.

I'm pretty sure Rome is a great city. I'm pretty sure you could have an awesome time exploring Rome, but by the time I got there I was already done with Italy. Done with Europe. I was ready for the beaches of Bali, our next stop on this quick jaunt around the world.

My exploratory motivation was low by the time I got to Rome. We went to the Colosseum and marveled for a moment before an ATM machine ate my card on a Sunday afternoon^[1]. We didn't quite have the money to get in and even if we did there was no way we were going to wait in the line that wrapped nearly all the way around the Colosseum. Ancient sites are pretty amazing in my opinion, but that amazingness diminishes considerably when the line to get in is five hours long. If I'm going to wait in a five hour line (and I'm not, ever, but if I were) I want a new iPad at the end of the experience.

When you're burned out on traveling the best thing to do is nothing. Which is what we did for three days. We explored a little, wandered the Trastevere area, ate some cacio e pepe (simple noodles with a sauce of pecorino and black pepper), a bit of pizza and even made it out to the Pantheon, which was an utterly disgusting experience. I know the Catholic Church is pretty much like the Borg in Star Trek, absorbing and destroying everything in its path, but to turn a place whose name literally translates as "many gods" into a catholic church is the sort of bullshit that just makes me despair about the future of humanity.

So instead of really getting into the sights of Rome we got into the food. Not the kind you get in restaurants, but the kind you find at the local market. Every afternoon we walked half a block down the street from our apartment to a small produce stand. It wasn't even a nice produce market, just an ordinary produce stand in a residential neighborhood with a mediocre selection. And it was the best damn produce I've ever purchased.

Each afternoon we bought nearly 2 kilos worth of zucchini, eggplant, lemon and greens. For under 2 euro. At the worst exchange rates that's about $2.80 for 4 pounds of produce. You can hardly buy a dozen bananas for that price in the U.S.

The only spices at the apartment where we stayed were salt and pepper. There was also some ordinary, cheap olive oil, which happens to be ten times better than the most expensive olive oil I've seen in the United States. But you don't need extensive spices and fancy oils when the ingredients you start with are high quality. I sauteed everything in a generous splash of olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and it was the best zucchini, eggplant and beef I've ever made, or had for that matter.

And I'm far from a great cook. I learned a few things working under talented cooks like Hugh Acheson and Chuck Ramsey, but even if you barely know how to scramble eggs, you could make the same thing I made in Rome. Good ingredients are all you really need, and the raw cooking materials of Italy are the best I've seen in all my travels.

In the end Italy and I didn't really get along, but the food redeemed it for me. The restaurants are good, but if you really want to experience the glory of Italian food you need to head to the market, grab some utterly amazing raw ingredients and whip up something yourself. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great.

Now hold my calls, I'm off to lie in a hammock somewhere in Indonesia.

+
1. I know I know. Terrible. Never use your ATM card after hours. The lesson here is that even if you spend years wandering the globe, you're still, at the end of the day, an idiot. Luckily I got it back the next day without too much hassle.↩
+

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/cooking-rome.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/cooking-rome.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7371024 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/cooking-rome.html @@ -0,0 +1,346 @@ + + + + + Cooking In Rome - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ +

Home → + +
+ + jrnl + + +

+ + +

Cooking in Rome

+ +

Rome, Italy

+ – Map +

+ June 14, 2011 + +

Rome exists on a scope that I’ve never encountered before in a city. It’s big and massively spread out. There’s really no downtown and everything you might want to see is miles from wherever you are. And it has all the attendant traffic, noise and confusion of humanity you would expect from a big city. It also spans several millennia of history with ancient Roman ruins butted up against Gucci and Armani stores.

I’m pretty sure Rome is a great city. I’m pretty sure you could have an awesome time exploring Rome, but by the time I got there I was already done with Italy. Done with Europe. I was ready for the beaches of Bali, our next stop on this quick jaunt around the world.

My exploratory motivation was low by the time I got to Rome. We went to the Colosseum and marveled for a moment before an ATM machine ate my card on a Sunday afternoon^[1]. We didn’t quite have the money to get in and even if we did there was no way we were going to wait in the line that wrapped nearly all the way around the Colosseum. Ancient sites are pretty amazing in my opinion, but that amazingness diminishes considerably when the line to get in is five hours long. If I’m going to wait in a five hour line (and I’m not, ever, but if I were) I want a new iPad at the end of the experience.

Colosseum, Rome,s Italy

When you’re burned out on traveling the best thing to do is nothing. Which is what we did for three days. We explored a little, wandered the Trastevere area, ate some cacio e pepe (simple noodles with a sauce of pecorino and black pepper), a bit of pizza and even made it out to the Pantheon, which was an utterly disgusting experience. I know the Catholic Church is pretty much like the Borg in Star Trek, absorbing and destroying everything in its path, but to turn a place whose name literally translates as “many gods” into a catholic church is the sort of bullshit that just makes me despair about the future of humanity.

Self portrait of cynicism, Pantheon Rome, Italy

So instead of really getting into the sights of Rome we got into the food. Not the kind you get in restaurants, but the kind you find at the local market. Every afternoon we walked half a block down the street from our apartment to a small produce stand. It wasn’t even a nice produce market, just an ordinary produce stand in a residential neighborhood with a mediocre selection. And it was the best damn produce I’ve ever purchased.

Each afternoon we bought nearly 2 kilos worth of zucchini, eggplant, lemon and greens. For under 2 euro. At the worst exchange rates that’s about $2.80 for 4 pounds of produce. You can hardly buy a dozen bananas for that price in the U.S.

The only spices at the apartment where we stayed were salt and pepper. There was also some ordinary, cheap olive oil, which happens to be ten times better than the most expensive olive oil I’ve seen in the United States. But you don’t need extensive spices and fancy oils when the ingredients you start with are high quality. I sauteed everything in a generous splash of olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and it was the best zucchini, eggplant and beef I’ve ever made, or had for that matter.

zuchinni, eggplant, greens, Rome, Italy

And I’m far from a great cook. I learned a few things working under talented cooks like Hugh Acheson and Chuck Ramsey, but even if you barely know how to scramble eggs, you could make the same thing I made in Rome. Good ingredients are all you really need, and the raw cooking materials of Italy are the best I’ve seen in all my travels.

In the end Italy and I didn’t really get along, but the food redeemed it for me. The restaurants are good, but if you really want to experience the glory of Italian food you need to head to the market, grab some utterly amazing raw ingredients and whip up something yourself. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great.

Now hold my calls, I’m off to lie in a hammock somewhere in Indonesia.

+
1. I know I know. Terrible. Never use your ATM card after hours. The lesson here is that even if you spend years wandering the globe, you’re still, at the end of the day, an idiot. Luckily I got it back the next day without too much hassle.↩
+

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + + + +

+ +

Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

+ +

+ + +

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+ + + + +

+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/cooking-rome.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/cooking-rome.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2bea1e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/cooking-rome.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +Cooking in Rome +=============== + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Tuesday, 14 June 2011 + +Rome exists on a scope that I've never encountered before in a city. It's big and massively spread out. There's really no downtown and everything you might want to see is miles from wherever you are. And it has all the attendant traffic, noise and confusion of humanity you would expect from a big city. It also spans several millennia of history with ancient Roman ruins butted up against Gucci and Armani stores. + +I'm pretty sure Rome is a great city. I'm pretty sure you could have an awesome time exploring Rome, but by the time I got there I was already done with Italy. Done with Europe. I was ready for the beaches of Bali, our next stop on this quick jaunt around the world. + + + +My exploratory motivation was low by the time I got to Rome. We went to the Colosseum and marveled for a moment before an ATM machine ate my card on a Sunday afternoon^[1]. We didn't quite have the money to get in and even if we did there was no way we were going to wait in the line that wrapped nearly all the way around the Colosseum. Ancient sites are pretty amazing in my opinion, but that amazingness diminishes considerably when the line to get in is five hours long. If I'm going to wait in a five hour line (and I'm not, ever, but if I were) I want a new iPad at the end of the experience. + + Colosseum, Rome,s Italy

+ +When you're burned out on traveling the best thing to do is nothing. Which is what we did for three days. We explored a little, wandered the Trastevere area, ate some cacio e pepe (simple noodles with a sauce of pecorino and black pepper), a bit of pizza and even made it out to the Pantheon, which was an utterly disgusting experience. I know the Catholic Church is pretty much like the Borg in Star Trek, absorbing and destroying everything in its path, but to turn a place whose name literally translates as "many gods" into a catholic church is the sort of bullshit that just makes me despair about the future of humanity. + + Self portrait of cynicism, Pantheon Rome, Italy

Self portrait of cynicism, Pantheon Rome, Italy

+ +So instead of really getting into the sights of Rome we got into the food. Not the kind you get in restaurants, but the kind you find at the local market. Every afternoon we walked half a block down the street from our apartment to a small produce stand. It wasn't even a nice produce market, just an ordinary produce stand in a residential neighborhood with a mediocre selection. And it was the best damn produce I've ever purchased. + +Each afternoon we bought nearly 2 kilos worth of zucchini, eggplant, lemon and greens. For under 2 euro. At the worst exchange rates that's about $2.80 for 4 pounds of produce. You can hardly buy a dozen bananas for that price in the U.S. + +The only spices at the apartment where we stayed were salt and pepper. There was also some ordinary, cheap olive oil, which happens to be ten times better than the most expensive olive oil I've seen in the United States. But you don't need extensive spices and fancy oils when the ingredients you start with are high quality. I sauteed everything in a generous splash of olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and it was the best zucchini, eggplant and beef I've ever made, or had for that matter. + + zuchinni, eggplant, greens, Rome, Italy

+ +And I'm far from a great cook. I learned a few things working under talented cooks like Hugh Acheson and Chuck Ramsey, but even if you barely know how to scramble eggs, you could make the same thing I made in Rome. Good ingredients are all you really need, and the raw cooking materials of Italy are the best I've seen in all my travels. + +In the end Italy and I didn't really get along, but the food redeemed it for me. The restaurants are good, but if you really want to experience the glory of Italian food you need to head to the market, grab some utterly amazing raw ingredients and whip up something yourself. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great. + +Now hold my calls, I'm off to lie in a hammock somewhere in Indonesia. + +

+
1. I know I know. Terrible. Never use your ATM card after hours. The lesson here is that even if you spend years wandering the globe, you're still, at the end of the day, an idiot. Luckily I got it back the next day without too much hassle.↩
+

diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/forever-today.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/forever-today.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41c6359 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/forever-today.amp @@ -0,0 +1,196 @@ + + + + + + +Forever Today + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Forever Today

+ June 7, 2011 + + +

There is something utterly amazing about walking down streets that are millennia old. Your feet are stepping on the same stones that someone more or less just like you stepped on thousands of years earlier, hurrying to work, or out for an evening stroll, perhaps stopping into some restaurant, some shop, some market, some temple.

I've been fortunate enough to wander such streets in several places, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Teotihuacán in Mexico City and now Pompeii here in Italy. What's remarkable about the experience is not the age, but the gap between then and now, which feels simultaneously immense and yet very small at the same time.

It feels small because when you wander around places like Pompeii you realize that human beings have changed very little over what seems like, to us anyway, vast expanses of time. Pompeii had the same elements of cities today, a central square, markets, temples, government offices, even fast food. Not much has changed over the years, though togas aren't much in vogue these days.

+ +Fast food, Pompeii style. +

At the same time you can't help but notice the chariot ruts in the stones, the smooth polish of well-worn streets that obviously saw centuries of use even before they were buried.

Chariot ruts. That was a long time ago. So close, and yet so very far away.

There are two remarkable things about Pompeii that make it different from the crumbling ruins of other civilizations I've been to. The first is that Pompeii was not some religious site, not a sacred place at all. It was just a town. Something of a resort town, but still a commercial center. People made and sold wine and garum. Government offices kept track of grain and fish and people frequented fast food joints and brothels. In a word, Pompeii was ordinary, and when it comes to archeological sites open to the public, that's unusual.

The other reason Pompeii is different is of course that it was preserved by the very thing that destroyed it. Pompeii lay buried under ash for nearly 2000 years, preserved just as it was on the morning of August 24, 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted.

The vast majority of the some 20,000 people that once lived in the city were able to escape the blast. Around 2,000 people, for whatever reason, did not run away and were killed by poisonous gases from the eruption. When the ash descended it buried them where they lay, under twenty five feet of debris.

The creepy thing about the plaster casts is how perfectly they capture the expressions of terror, horror, and sometimes, what looks like resignation, on people's faces. It's yet another bizarre way that Pompeii manages to both bridge time and remind you how vast that bridge between then and now really is. The casts are people, nearly 2000 year old people, but they could easily have been formed in some disaster today.

Sadly, the perfectly perserved version of Pompeii that archeologists found in 1748 has been in steady decline ever since. The minute they began excavating it, Pompeii began to fall victim to the forces of time that it had so neatly avoided under all that ash. Weathering, erosion, light exposure, water damage, poor methods of excavation and reconstruction and introduced plants and animals have all taken their toll, to say nothing of tourism, vandalism and theft.

Italy being Italy, Pompeii is in a steady state of decline. Just last year an entire house -- admittedly, not one open to the public -- collapsed thanks to water seeping under it.

That's why, at this point, Pompeii is largely just walls, stone roads and a handful of marble structures. The frescos, statues and even most of the plaster death molds have long since been carted off to the archeological museum in Naples where you can see elaborate mosaics and the ever-popular "Gabinetto Segreto", otherwise known as the erotic art of Pompeii.

It's all guess work at this point. Even if you turn to writing from the time, well now you have one more opinion, one author's take on the times, but still no real sense of what the culture thought. It is a long way from here to there, there's just no getting around that.

Yet, maybe it isn't. Beliefs change, morals change, but people, they seem to stay basically the same. Suppose Charleston or even New York were buried under ash tomorrow, left as they are today for an eternity. Would people 2000 years from now accurately reconstruct our way of life?

They might get the gist of it -- we lived in buildings, we had other buildings for worshiping gods and still others for buying kebabs, but they would miss the finer points. Yet, even without the subtleties they would know one thing for sure: these were people, human beings, and they lived more or less like us.

Whether you drive chariots or scooters doesn't matter, something is always marking our passing, something is always making ruts in the road. And sometimes that's all you need to know.

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/forever-today.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/forever-today.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b1582a9 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/forever-today.html @@ -0,0 +1,351 @@ + + + + + Forever Today - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ +

Home → + +
+ + jrnl + + +

+ + +

Forever Today

+ +

Pompeii, Italy

+ – Map +

+ June 7, 2011 + +

I’ve been fortunate enough to wander such streets in several places, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Teotihuacán in Mexico City and now Pompeii here in Italy. What’s remarkable about the experience is not the age, but the gap between then and now, which feels simultaneously immense and yet very small at the same time.

Fast food restaurant cric 79 AD, Pompeii, Italy

+ Fast food, Pompeii style. +

+ +

At the same time you can’t help but notice the chariot ruts in the stones, the smooth polish of well-worn streets that obviously saw centuries of use even before they were buried.

Chariot ruts. That was a long time ago. So close, and yet so very far away.

There are two remarkable things about Pompeii that make it different from the crumbling ruins of other civilizations I’ve been to. The first is that Pompeii was not some religious site, not a sacred place at all. It was just a town. Something of a resort town, but still a commercial center. People made and sold wine and garum. Government offices kept track of grain and fish and people frequented fast food joints and brothels. In a word, Pompeii was ordinary, and when it comes to archeological sites open to the public, that’s unusual.

plaster body cast, Pompeii, Italy Thanks to an ingenious idea by an Italian archaeologist in the mid 19th century, their final poses have been preserved in plaster. When the bodies at Pompeii were buried they decayed, eventually turning to mostly dust, as all of us will, but that left empty spaces in the hardening ash. Archaeologists found those empty spaces, poured in plaster, let it set, and then excavated around it — a perfect mold of the dead body.

The creepy thing about the plaster casts is how perfectly they capture the expressions of terror, horror, and sometimes, what looks like resignation, on people’s faces. It’s yet another bizarre way that Pompeii manages to both bridge time and remind you how vast that bridge between then and now really is. The casts are people, nearly 2000 year old people, but they could easily have been formed in some disaster today.

Italy being Italy, Pompeii is in a steady state of decline. Just last year an entire house — admittedly, not one open to the public — collapsed thanks to water seeping under it.

That’s why, at this point, Pompeii is largely just walls, stone roads and a handful of marble structures. The frescos, statues and even most of the plaster death molds have long since been carted off to the archeological museum in Naples where you can see elaborate mosaics and the ever-popular “Gabinetto Segreto”, otherwise known as the erotic art of Pompeii.

plaster body cast, Pompeii, Italy Some of the erotic frescos and sculptures were pulled out of the brothels, while others were in private homes and baths. To say the ancient Romans were a sex-obsessed bunch would be to, as most guides at Pompeii seem to do, apply current sexual mores to ancient times. There were brothels in Pompeii, that much is indisputable. But beyond that, to suggest, as many guides I overheard did, that the more (currently) taboo frescos of gay and lesbian sex (or the sculpture of a man having sex with a goat) were jokes intended to make brothel patrons chuckle, seems a stretch — pure conjecture really. Who knows what they were for?

It’s all guess work at this point. Even if you turn to writing from the time, well now you have one more opinion, one author’s take on the times, but still no real sense of what the culture thought. It is a long way from here to there, there’s just no getting around that.

Yet, maybe it isn’t. Beliefs change, morals change, but people, they seem to stay basically the same. Suppose Charleston or even New York were buried under ash tomorrow, left as they are today for an eternity. Would people 2000 years from now accurately reconstruct our way of life?

They might get the gist of it — we lived in buildings, we had other buildings for worshiping gods and still others for buying kebabs, but they would miss the finer points. Yet, even without the subtleties they would know one thing for sure: these were people, human beings, and they lived more or less like us.

Whether you drive chariots or scooters doesn’t matter, something is always marking our passing, something is always making ruts in the road. And sometimes that’s all you need to know.

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + + + +

+ +

Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + +

+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/forever-today.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/forever-today.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d805d18 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/forever-today.txt @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +Forever Today +============= + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Tuesday, 07 June 2011 + +There is something utterly amazing about walking down streets that are millennia old. Your feet are stepping on the same stones that someone more or less just like you stepped on thousands of years earlier, hurrying to work, or out for an evening stroll, perhaps stopping into some restaurant, some shop, some market, some temple. + +I've been fortunate enough to wander such streets in several places, [Angkor Wat][1] in Cambodia, Teotihuacán in Mexico City and now Pompeii here in Italy. What's remarkable about the experience is not the age, but the gap between then and now, which feels simultaneously immense and yet very small at the same time. + +It feels small because when you wander around places like Pompeii you realize that human beings have changed very little over what seems like, to us anyway, vast expanses of time. Pompeii had the same elements of cities today, a central square, markets, temples, government offices, even fast food. Not much has changed over the years, though togas aren't much in vogue these days. + +

+ Fast food, Pompeii style. +

+ + + +At the same time you can't help but notice the chariot ruts in the stones, the smooth polish of well-worn streets that obviously saw centuries of use even before they were buried. + +Chariot ruts. That was a long time ago. So close, and yet so very far away. + +There are two remarkable things about Pompeii that make it different from the crumbling ruins of other civilizations I've been to. The first is that Pompeii was not some religious site, not a sacred place at all. It was just a town. Something of a resort town, but still a commercial center. People made and sold wine and garum. Government offices kept track of grain and fish and people frequented fast food joints and brothels. In a word, Pompeii was ordinary, and when it comes to archeological sites open to the public, that's unusual. + +The other reason Pompeii is different is of course that it was preserved by the very thing that destroyed it. Pompeii lay buried under ash for nearly 2000 years, preserved just as it was on the morning of August 24, 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted. + +The vast majority of the some 20,000 people that once lived in the city were able to escape the blast. Around 2,000 people, for whatever reason, did not run away and were killed by poisonous gases from the eruption. When the ash descended it buried them where they lay, under twenty five feet of debris. + + plaster body cast, Pompeii, Italy

Thanks to an ingenious idea by an Italian archaeologist in the mid 19th century, their final poses have been preserved in plaster. When the bodies at Pompeii were buried they decayed, eventually turning to mostly dust, as all of us will, but that left empty spaces in the hardening ash. Archaeologists found those empty spaces, poured in plaster, let it set, and then excavated around it -- a perfect mold of the dead body. + +The creepy thing about the plaster casts is how perfectly they capture the expressions of terror, horror, and sometimes, what looks like resignation, on people's faces. It's yet another bizarre way that Pompeii manages to both bridge time and remind you how vast that bridge between then and now really is. The casts are people, nearly 2000 year old people, but they could easily have been formed in some disaster today. + +Sadly, the perfectly perserved version of Pompeii that archeologists found in 1748 has been in steady decline ever since. The minute they began excavating it, Pompeii began to fall victim to the forces of time that it had so neatly avoided under all that ash. Weathering, erosion, light exposure, water damage, poor methods of excavation and reconstruction and introduced plants and animals have all taken their toll, to say nothing of tourism, vandalism and theft. + +Italy being Italy, Pompeii is in a steady state of decline. Just last year an entire house -- admittedly, not one open to the public -- collapsed thanks to water seeping under it. + +That's why, at this point, Pompeii is largely just walls, stone roads and a handful of marble structures. The frescos, statues and even most of the plaster death molds have long since been carted off to the archeological museum in Naples where you can see elaborate mosaics and the ever-popular "Gabinetto Segreto", otherwise known as the erotic art of Pompeii. + + plaster body cast, Pompeii, Italy

Some of the erotic frescos and sculptures were pulled out of the brothels, while others were in private homes and baths. To say the ancient Romans were a sex-obsessed bunch would be to, as most guides at Pompeii seem to do, apply current sexual mores to ancient times. There were brothels in Pompeii, that much is indisputable. But beyond that, to suggest, as many guides I overheard did, that the more (currently) taboo frescos of gay and lesbian sex (or the sculpture of a man having sex with a goat) were jokes intended to make brothel patrons chuckle, seems a stretch -- pure conjecture really. Who knows what they were for? + +It's all guess work at this point. Even if you turn to writing from the time, well now you have one more opinion, one author's take on the times, but still no real sense of what the culture thought. It is a long way from here to there, there's just no getting around that. + +Yet, maybe it isn't. Beliefs change, morals change, but people, they seem to stay basically the same. Suppose [Charleston][2] or even New York were buried under ash tomorrow, left as they are today for an eternity. Would people 2000 years from now accurately reconstruct our way of life? + +They might get the gist of it -- we lived in buildings, we had other buildings for worshiping gods and still others for buying kebabs, but they would miss the finer points. Yet, even without the subtleties they would know one thing for sure: these were people, human beings, and they lived more or less like us. + +Whether you drive chariots or scooters doesn't matter, something is always marking our passing, something is always making ruts in the road. And sometimes that's all you need to know. + + + + +[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2006/mar/21/angkor-wat/ +[2]: http://luxagraf.net/2011/jan/18/charleston-a-z/ diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..36188e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,125 @@ + + + + + Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ +

Home →
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June

Archive: June 2011

The Best Snorkeling in the World + Jun 23, 2011 +
The Balinese Temple Ceremony + Jun 19, 2011 +
Motor City is Burning + Jun 16, 2011 +
Cooking in Rome + Jun 14, 2011 +
Natural Science + Jun 10, 2011 +
Forever Today + Jun 07, 2011 +
The New Pollution + Jun 06, 2011 +
The Language of Cities + Jun 04, 2011 +

+ + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/language-cities.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/language-cities.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb9d278 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/language-cities.amp @@ -0,0 +1,188 @@ + + + + + + +The Language of Cities + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The Language of Cities

+ June 4, 2011 + + +

Paris wants me out. It knows I didn't come here for it, I came here to see some friends, none of them even from Paris, and to show my wife a world I knew before we were married. I never came for Paris itself and the city knows it. And it's angry.

Cities can get angry at you. This isn't the first time it's happened to me. New York threw me out once. Los Angeles and I left on mutually hostile terms, though we've since made up. Cities have personalities just like people, and to really be part of a city your personalities have to mesh, you have to find each other on your own terms everyday¹.

Paris is jealous and possessive, wants you all to itself. This time around I set out to see all the things I had seen before, St. Chapelle, my favorite cafes in the Marais, the Louvre, Pere Lachaise. There was very little new ground broken. Which is not to say you can't go back again. You can if you do it right, so long as you realize that while a place may be familiar, it is always something new. Sometimes it's even just like the last time, but the danger is that your agenda gets in the way of what the place is trying to say. What you hear today is not what you heard yesterday, not what you might hear tomorrow. When you repeat too much you fail to give more of yourself, you're asking the city to perform for you like a trained seal.

When you fail to give them everything, cities bite back. In Paris it started with stomach sickness, a day alternating between the bed and toilet. Then it moved on to headaches, but it wasn't until a cop kicked us off the Pont Des Arts bridge for drinking beer that I realized the problem wasn't me, it was that the city was unhappy with me.

Sure there are probably causal explanations for the runs, something I ate perhaps, or the headaches -- allergies, a stiff mattress -- but if you think causality explains the sum total of the world, your life will never be very interesting.

For me the truth is this: I went to Paris with my own agenda -- repeat what I had loved about it six years ago -- and that's just a recipe for personal disaster. Even though Paris did deliver everything I asked of it, it exacted a price on me. My most memorable moments of this visit will be the shower stall opposite the toilet in our (very lovely by the way) apartment, which I spent far too much time staring at.

That's not how you want to travel the world. What you want is irrelevant to the world. You ask for greatest hits and the world will give you toilets to hug. Ask nothing and it will give you everything. Paris wanted me and my agenda disrupted, brought around to the larger agenda, the world's agenda.

Unfortunately it took until nearly the last minute before I realized this essential truth. But the minute the plane to Rome tucked its landing gear into the fuselage I started to feel better. Too little, too late. Next time Paris, next time, I will remember what you have taught me.

+
If you've never seen The Cruise, go rent/netflix it. Tim Levich, odd though he made seem on film, knows about these things. ↩
+

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/language-cities.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/language-cities.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fdf1f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/language-cities.html @@ -0,0 +1,344 @@ + + + + + The Language Of Cities - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ +

Home → + +
+ + jrnl + + +

+ + +

The Language of Cities

+ +

Paris, France

+ – Map +

+ June 4, 2011 + +

Paris wants me out. It knows I didn’t come here for it, I came here to see some friends, none of them even from Paris, and to show my wife a world I knew before we were married. I never came for Paris itself and the city knows it. And it’s angry.

Cities can get angry at you. This isn’t the first time it’s happened to me. New York threw me out once. Los Angeles and I left on mutually hostile terms, though we’ve since made up. Cities have personalities just like people, and to really be part of a city your personalities have to mesh, you have to find each other on your own terms everyday¹.

Paris is jealous and possessive, wants you all to itself. This time around I set out to see all the things I had seen before, St. Chapelle, my favorite cafes in the Marais, the Louvre, Pere Lachaise. There was very little new ground broken. Which is not to say you can’t go back again. You can if you do it right, so long as you realize that while a place may be familiar, it is always something new. Sometimes it’s even just like the last time, but the danger is that your agenda gets in the way of what the place is trying to say. What you hear today is not what you heard yesterday, not what you might hear tomorrow. When you repeat too much you fail to give more of yourself, you’re asking the city to perform for you like a trained seal.

Stained glass, St. Chapelle, Paris, France

When you fail to give them everything, cities bite back. In Paris it started with stomach sickness, a day alternating between the bed and toilet. Then it moved on to headaches, but it wasn’t until a cop kicked us off the Pont Des Arts bridge for drinking beer that I realized the problem wasn’t me, it was that the city was unhappy with me.

Sure there are probably causal explanations for the runs, something I ate perhaps, or the headaches — allergies, a stiff mattress — but if you think causality explains the sum total of the world, your life will never be very interesting.

For me the truth is this: I went to Paris with my own agenda — repeat what I had loved about it six years ago — and that’s just a recipe for personal disaster. Even though Paris did deliver everything I asked of it, it exacted a price on me. My most memorable moments of this visit will be the shower stall opposite the toilet in our (very lovely by the way) apartment, which I spent far too much time staring at.

That’s not how you want to travel the world. What you want is irrelevant to the world. You ask for greatest hits and the world will give you toilets to hug. Ask nothing and it will give you everything. Paris wanted me and my agenda disrupted, brought around to the larger agenda, the world’s agenda.

+
If you’ve never seen The Cruise, go rent/netflix it. Tim Levich, odd though he made seem on film, knows about these things. ↩
+

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + + + +

+ +

Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + +

+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/language-cities.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/language-cities.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d962aa3 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/language-cities.txt @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +The Language of Cities +====================== + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Saturday, 04 June 2011 + +Paris wants me out. It knows I didn't come here for it, I came here to see some friends, none of them even from Paris, and to show my wife a world I knew before we were married. I never came for Paris itself and the city knows it. And it's angry. + +Cities can get angry at you. This isn't the first time it's happened to me. New York threw me out once. Los Angeles and I left on mutually hostile terms, though we've since made up. Cities have personalities just like people, and to really be part of a city your personalities have to mesh, you have to find each other on your own terms everyday[^1]. + +Paris is jealous and possessive, wants you all to itself. This time around I set out to see all the things I had seen before, [St. Chapelle][1], my favorite cafes in the Marais, the Louvre, Pere Lachaise. There was very little new ground broken. Which is not to say [you can't go back again][2]. You can if you do it right, so long as you realize that while a place may be familiar, it is always something new. Sometimes it's even just like the last time, but the danger is that your agenda gets in the way of what the place is trying to say. What you hear today is not what you heard yesterday, not what you might hear tomorrow. When you repeat too much you fail to give more of yourself, you're asking the city to perform for you like a trained seal. + + Stained glass, St. Chapelle, Paris, France

Stained glass, St. Chapelle, Paris, France

+ +When you fail to give them everything, cities bite back. In Paris it started with stomach sickness, a day alternating between the bed and toilet. Then it moved on to headaches, but it wasn't until a cop kicked us off the Pont Des Arts bridge for drinking beer that I realized the problem wasn't me, it was that the city was unhappy with me. + +Sure there are probably causal explanations for the runs, something I ate perhaps, or the headaches -- allergies, a stiff mattress -- but if you think causality explains the sum total of the world, your life will never be very interesting. + +For me the truth is this: I went to Paris with my own agenda -- repeat what I had loved about it six years ago -- and that's just a recipe for personal disaster. Even though Paris did deliver everything I asked of it, it exacted a price on me. My most memorable moments of this visit will be the shower stall opposite the toilet in our (very lovely by the way) apartment, which I spent far too much time staring at. + +That's not how you want to travel the world. What you want is irrelevant to the world. You ask for greatest hits and the world will give you toilets to hug. Ask nothing and it will give you everything. Paris wanted me and my agenda disrupted, brought around to the larger agenda, the world's agenda. + +Unfortunately it took until nearly the last minute before I realized this essential truth. But the minute the plane to Rome tucked its landing gear into the fuselage I started to feel better. Too little, too late. Next time Paris, next time, I will remember what you have taught me. + +[1]: http://luxagraf.net/2005/oct/28/sainte-chapelle/ +[2]: http://luxagraf.net/2008/jun/30/you-cant-go-home-again/ + +[^1]: If you've never seen The Cruise, go rent/netflix it. Tim Levich, odd though he made seem on film, knows about these things. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/motor-city-burning.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/motor-city-burning.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8964ffb --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/motor-city-burning.amp @@ -0,0 +1,185 @@ + + + + + + +Motor City is Burning + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Motor City is Burning

+ June 16, 2011 + + +

I’ve been out all afternoon on a motorbike. Now I'm sitting on a marble balcony, sipping lukewarm beer, listening to the gregarious chatter of various European languages, all of which could only mean one thing -- I've finally made it back to Southeast Asia.

It was a 36-hour plane flight to get from Rome to here. Or rather a 36-hour series of plane flights and layovers, including considerable time spent in the lovely Qatar airport, all of which meant that, thanks to the wonder of layovers and planetary rotation, we got to see the sun rise and set twice in one day. It'll do a number to your head, that.

We arrived in Bali in a jet-lagged daze and promptly hired a cab for Ubud the so-called cultural center of Bali, halfway up into the hills that fall away from Mt. Agung, the volcano that dominates the southern half of Bali, down to the seaside somewhere south of Ubud.

Ubud was probably once a small village in the hills, but these days its more of a tourist mecca, thanks to some really awful western travel books that shall not be named. Ubud now sprawls out from the central crossroads up into neighboring villages pretty much erasing any discernible difference between Ubud and the dozen or so villages that surround it.

I won't lie to you. Ubud is crowded, in fact, all of Bali is crowded, with traffic like I've never seen anywhere else in Asia. Snarled roads mean incessant horns and shouts are the primary sounds of Bali. Interestingly, Ubud isn't nearly as crowded with tourists as I had expected, at least it wasn't while we were there. During the days the streets would fill up with tourists on day trips from the resorts down south in Kuta and Seminyak, both about 20-30km from Ubud (if you want some idea of the traffic in Bali consider that a 20-30km distance will take anywhere from one to two hours by car or motorbike), but in the evening, after the resort goers were safely back beach-side, Ubud seemed nearly empty.

The traffic and congestion of Bali isn't something you can blame on tourists, it's mainly just the Balinese going about their lives. It made for hectic bike riding, at least until you could get out of the center of Ubud. There was a lot of choking on diesel fumes and waiting or weaving through, traffic.

Once I got through the two main intersections of Ubud the traffic mostly gave way and I had the road to myself, save other motorbikes and heavily loaded down trucks. The countryside around Ubud is well worth riding through, beautiful terraced rice paddies that spill down the mountain sides, glowing a verdant green in the evening light. Over the course of four days I think I rode about 120K, in one case halfway up the side of Mt. Agung.

The smoky wind alternates between choking and enticing as it whips about my helmet. But any choking is offset by the gorgeous soft twilight of the tropics, which kept me riding through village after village, each with it's own craft theme. One village would be all stone work, concrete fountains, sculptures of Buddha and countless pots and urns. The next might be wood carving, intricate masks, totem pole-like sculptures and ornate arched doors. The best were the weaving villages, brilliantly colored fabrics flowing out of a dozen small stone buildings, all of them eventually making their way down to Ubud for sale.

But awesome as it was to be back on the Asian version of a motorbike, it wasn't quite the relaxing riding I did in Laos and elsewhere. You can never recapture the magic, and I wasn't trying.... Okay, maybe I was, but it didn't work. regrettably Honda seems to have phased out the Dream in the last five years, replacing it with something called the Nitro, which just doesn't have the same ring to it. But the bike is irrelevant, was always irrelevant. I missed my friends, especially because I just saw Debi in Paris. It just wasn't the same riding by myself. Debi, Matt, where are you? There are roads to be ridden, locals with ten people on a bike to be humbled by. Six fingered men to be seen, by some.

It wasn't the same. It never is. But you know what, it's amazing anyway.

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/motor-city-burning.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/motor-city-burning.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd15d5b --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/motor-city-burning.html @@ -0,0 +1,340 @@ + + + + + Motor City Is Burning - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ +

Home → + +
+ + jrnl + + +

+ + +

Motor City is Burning

+ +

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

+ – Map +

+ June 16, 2011 + +

I’ve been out all afternoon on a motorbike. Now I’m sitting on a marble balcony, sipping lukewarm beer, listening to the gregarious chatter of various European languages, all of which could only mean one thing — I’ve finally made it back to Southeast Asia.

Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

I won’t lie to you. Ubud is crowded, in fact, all of Bali is crowded, with traffic like I’ve never seen anywhere else in Asia. Snarled roads mean incessant horns and shouts are the primary sounds of Bali. Interestingly, Ubud isn’t nearly as crowded with tourists as I had expected, at least it wasn’t while we were there. During the days the streets would fill up with tourists on day trips from the resorts down south in Kuta and Seminyak, both about 20-30km from Ubud (if you want some idea of the traffic in Bali consider that a 20-30km distance will take anywhere from one to two hours by car or motorbike), but in the evening, after the resort goers were safely back beach-side, Ubud seemed nearly empty.

The traffic and congestion of Bali isn’t something you can blame on tourists, it’s mainly just the Balinese going about their lives. It made for hectic bike riding, at least until you could get out of the center of Ubud. There was a lot of choking on diesel fumes and waiting or weaving through, traffic.

Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

The smoky wind alternates between choking and enticing as it whips about my helmet. But any choking is offset by the gorgeous soft twilight of the tropics, which kept me riding through village after village, each with it’s own craft theme. One village would be all stone work, concrete fountains, sculptures of Buddha and countless pots and urns. The next might be wood carving, intricate masks, totem pole-like sculptures and ornate arched doors. The best were the weaving villages, brilliantly colored fabrics flowing out of a dozen small stone buildings, all of them eventually making their way down to Ubud for sale.

But awesome as it was to be back on the Asian version of a motorbike, it wasn’t quite the relaxing riding I did in Laos and elsewhere. You can never recapture the magic, and I wasn’t trying…. Okay, maybe I was, but it didn’t work. regrettably Honda seems to have phased out the Dream in the last five years, replacing it with something called the Nitro, which just doesn’t have the same ring to it. But the bike is irrelevant, was always irrelevant. I missed my friends, especially because I just saw Debi in Paris. It just wasn’t the same riding by myself. Debi, Matt, where are you? There are roads to be ridden, locals with ten people on a bike to be humbled by. Six fingered men to be seen, by some.

It wasn’t the same. It never is. But you know what, it’s amazing anyway.

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + + + +

+ +

Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + +

+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/motor-city-burning.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/motor-city-burning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fec0079 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/motor-city-burning.txt @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +Motor City is Burning +===================== + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Thursday, 16 June 2011 + +I’ve been out all afternoon on a motorbike. Now I'm sitting on a marble balcony, sipping lukewarm beer, listening to the gregarious chatter of various European languages, all of which could only mean one thing -- I've finally made it back to Southeast Asia. + +It was a 36-hour plane flight to get from Rome to here. Or rather a 36-hour series of plane flights and layovers, including considerable time spent in the lovely Qatar airport, all of which meant that, thanks to the wonder of layovers and planetary rotation, we got to see the sun rise and set twice in one day. It'll do a number to your head, that. + + + +We arrived in Bali in a jet-lagged daze and promptly hired a cab for Ubud the so-called cultural center of Bali, halfway up into the hills that fall away from Mt. Agung, the volcano that dominates the southern half of Bali, down to the seaside somewhere south of Ubud. + + Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

+ +Ubud was probably once a small village in the hills, but these days its more of a tourist mecca, thanks to some really awful western travel books that shall not be named. Ubud now sprawls out from the central crossroads up into neighboring villages pretty much erasing any discernible difference between Ubud and the dozen or so villages that surround it. + +I won't lie to you. Ubud is crowded, in fact, all of Bali is crowded, with traffic like I've never seen anywhere else in Asia. Snarled roads mean incessant horns and shouts are the primary sounds of Bali. Interestingly, Ubud isn't nearly as crowded with tourists as I had expected, at least it wasn't while we were there. During the days the streets would fill up with tourists on day trips from the resorts down south in Kuta and Seminyak, both about 20-30km from Ubud (if you want some idea of the traffic in Bali consider that a 20-30km distance will take anywhere from one to two hours by car or motorbike), but in the evening, after the resort goers were safely back beach-side, Ubud seemed nearly empty. + +The traffic and congestion of Bali isn't something you can blame on tourists, it's mainly just the Balinese going about their lives. It made for hectic bike riding, at least until you could get out of the center of Ubud. There was a lot of choking on diesel fumes and waiting or weaving through, traffic. + +Once I got through the two main intersections of Ubud the traffic mostly gave way and I had the road to myself, save other motorbikes and heavily loaded down trucks. The countryside around Ubud is well worth riding through, beautiful terraced rice paddies that spill down the mountain sides, glowing a verdant green in the evening light. Over the course of four days I think I rode about 120K, in one case halfway up the side of Mt. Agung. + + Rice paddies outside of Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

+ +The smoky wind alternates between choking and enticing as it whips about my helmet. But any choking is offset by the gorgeous soft twilight of the tropics, which kept me riding through village after village, each with it's own craft theme. One village would be all stone work, concrete fountains, sculptures of Buddha and countless pots and urns. The next might be wood carving, intricate masks, totem pole-like sculptures and ornate arched doors. The best were the weaving villages, brilliantly colored fabrics flowing out of a dozen small stone buildings, all of them eventually making their way down to Ubud for sale. + +But awesome as it was to be back on the Asian version of a motorbike, it wasn't quite the relaxing riding I did in Laos and elsewhere. You can never recapture the magic, and I wasn't trying.... Okay, maybe I was, but it didn't work. regrettably Honda seems to have phased out the Dream in the last five years, replacing it with something called the Nitro, which just doesn't have the same ring to it. But the bike is irrelevant, was always irrelevant. I missed my friends, especially because I just saw Debi in Paris. It just wasn't the same riding by myself. Debi, Matt, where are you? There are roads to be ridden, locals with ten people on a bike to be humbled by. Six fingered men to be seen, by some. + +It wasn't the same. It never is. But you know what, it's amazing anyway. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/natural-science.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/natural-science.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6cdcc75 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/natural-science.amp @@ -0,0 +1,194 @@ + + + + + + +Natural Science + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Natural Science

+ June 10, 2011 + + +

There's no way around it; Florence is crowded. It may well be that Naples is the only Italian city that isn't overrun with tourists in the summer, but after three days of hardly seeing another traveler, I wasn't really prepared for the crowds in Florence.

Florence is, admittedly, more of what tourists expect Italy to be. There's no graffiti, the streets are free of trash and the city looks like something out of a fairy tale cliché -- narrow, winding streets, beautiful river walks and plenty of English-speaking waiters. And so they come.

Luckily it's never that hard to dodge crowds. Sometimes you head out to Angkor Wat in the sweltering midday heat. In Florence you just need to get up early and the streets will be deserted. Once everyone else is up, head over to "La Specola", the Museum of Zoology, which is part of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze. Zoology isn't something near the top of most must-see lists and in my experience, you'll pretty much have the place to yourself.

Of course how much you'll enjoy La Specola depends a little bit on how much you enjoy wandering through rooms filled with dead animals. My father taught biology and zoology for many years, so I grew up around dead animals, but clearly, La Specola is not for everyone.

Part of the appeal of the museum is simply the antique wooden cabinets used to house the various lions, leopards, monkeys, birds and butterflies. The old, uneven and warped glass ripples as you pass, distorts the view from the corner of your eye, giving all the animals a shimmering hint of movement, as if there were still a bit of life left somewhere behind the glass.

Beautiful glass aside, what makes La Specola special is how amazingly old the specimens are. La Specola records the very beginnings of natural science as we know it. The visible specimen tags I could read ranged from the early 1700s up through the late 1800s and into the 1900s. A few specimens come from the Medici family's private collection and are even older. That means the vast majority of the animals in La Specola date from well before Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, and some were brought to Florence even before Linnaeus had come up with the means of organizing them.

Of course stuffed specimens from 300 years ago aren't going to be in the best of shape. Feathers have fallen off many of the birds, scales have dropped from the fish, the large mammals have badly dried and cracked hides and the natural coloring has long since faded from many.

What's fascinating isn't so much the specimens themselves, but the glimpse they offer into the curious minds of the time. When La Specola was founded in 1771, western culture was just beginning to shrug off thousands of years of religious dogma, dropping a vision of the world where everything was the province of god, for a vision of the world in which the human mind could explore on its own. La Specola hails from the very beginning of that yearning to know more about the world, to reject doctrine and discover first hand the creatures that share our planet.

In the late 17th and early 18th century there was an explosion of exploration, travel and discovery. The "age of discovery" as it's commonly called in hindsight, was the age of people like you and me, curious about the world and determined to see it for themselves, stumbling around, finding what they found. In the case of zoologists much of what they found was sent back here, to La Specola. It was a unique time, there were no professional scientists yet, no authorities or academic review boards, everything was new, everything was a discovery.

Yes, there's something perverse about heading out into the world, discovering exotic and fascinating animals and then killing, gutting and stuffing them. It's gruesome business if you go into the details. There's no reason to do it now, but circa 1700 it was the only link between those who could go into the field and those who stayed behind to make sense of it all.

La Specola is a link between then and now. A record of the conversation between those who discovered and those who took discoveries and turned them into something meaningful. Stuffed carcasses are not particularly meaningful in and of themselves. Colorful perhaps, exotic and even alien in some cases, but finding and recording is only half of what creates the store of human understanding. La Specola lays that conversation open for anyone to walk through and experience.

If stuffed and canned dead animals aren't enough to keep the tourists at bay, then the last two rooms certainly are. The last section of La Specola is nothing but wax models of dissected human bodies, flayed open to varying degrees to show muscle structure, viens, organs and even nerves. The models were created in the 1800s from real human bodies and were used to teach anatomy to medical students. The models are remarkably life-like and cover the entire spectrum of human existence from stillborn, syphilis-riddled fetuses to otherwise healthy adults and even larger-than-life skeletons.

At first glance the wax models are a touch disturbing, not necessarily because they're life-like, but because they put us on the same shelves, in the same warped glass cases. Otherwise, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? We are after all just one more animal roaming the planet. But a curious, inquisitive animal that can dream anything it wants, including a natural science to explain how curious inquisitive animals can dream anything they want... just remember, it's turtles all the way down.

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/natural-science.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/natural-science.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..746b343 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/natural-science.html @@ -0,0 +1,421 @@ + + + + + Natural Science - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ +

Home → + +
+ + jrnl + + +

+ + +

Natural Science

Dodging crowds and journeying to the heart of myth in Florence

Firenze (Florence), Italy

+ – Map +

+ June 10, 2011 + +

Florence is crowded. It may well be that Naples is the only Italian city that isn’t overrun with tourists in the summer. Three days without other travelers around left us unprepared for the crowds in Florence.

+ +

River in Florence, Italy photographed by luxagraf

+ +

Florence is, admittedly, more of what tourists expect Italy to be. There’s no graffiti, the streets are free of trash, and the city looks like something out of a fairy tale, the sort of thing that makes travel writers trot out the clichés — narrow, winding, stone streets, beautiful river walks, and plenty of English-speaking waiters. And so they come.

+ +

River scene, Florence, Italy photographed by luxagraf

+ +

Luckily it’s never that hard to dodge crowds. Sometimes you have to tour Angkor Wat in the sweltering midday heat. Other times you need go in the off season. In Florence it’s really easy, you just need to get up early and the streets will be deserted.

+ + + +

empty streets of Firenze photographed by luxagraf

+ + + + + +

+ + + +

+ +

Once the tourists make it out of bed, get off the streets. Head over to “La Specola”, the Museum of Zoology, part of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze. Zoology isn’t something near the top of most must-see lists and in my experience, you’ll have the place to yourself.

Of course how much you’ll enjoy La Specola depends a little bit on how much you enjoy wandering through rooms filled with dead animals. My father taught biology and zoology for many years, so I grew up around dead animals, but clearly, La Specola is not for everyone.

+ +

glass cases in the bird room, Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze, Firenze, Italy photographed by luxagraf

+ +

La Specola’s specimens are old. Most date from the very beginnings of natural science. The visible specimen tags I could read ranged from the early 1700s up through the late 1800s and into the 1900s. A few specimens come from the Medici family’s private collection and are even older. That means the vast majority of the animals in La Specola date from well before Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, and some were brought to Florence even before Linnaeus had come up with the means of organizing them.

+ +

birds in glass cases, Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze, Florence, Italy photographed by luxagraf

+ +

Of course stuffed specimens from 300 years ago aren’t going to be in the best of shape. Feathers have fallen off many of the birds, scales have dropped from the fish, the large mammals have badly dried and cracked hides and the natural coloring has long since faded from many.

What’s fascinating isn’t so much the specimens themselves, but the glimpse they offer into the curious minds of the time. When La Specola was founded in 1771, western culture was just shrugging off over a thousand of years of monotheist dogma, shifting its gaze from a god to the world itself. New myths, ones that shape our world today¹, were starting to weave themselves together around this time. La Specola hails from the very beginning of that yearning to know more about the world, to reject monotheist doctrine in favor of actual experience with the world around you, in this case discovering first hand the creatures that share our planet.

+ +

big cats, Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze, Florence, Italy photographed by luxagraf

+ +

This is the explosion of exploration, travel and discovery. The “age of discovery” as hindsight has named it.

But more than that, it’s the golden age of the amateur. It’s the age of people like you and me, curious about the world and determined to see it for themselves, stumbling around, finding what they found. It was a unique time, there were no professional scientists yet, no authorities or academic review boards. For western Europe, crawling out from under the yoke of monotheism, everything was new, everything was a discovery.

In the case of amateur zoologists much of what they found was sent back here, to La Specola.

That’s the bright side. But there’s something obviously perverse about it all too. Heading out into the world, discovering exotic and fascinating animals and then killing, gutting and stuffing them for the folks back home suggests that yoke of monotheistic dogma has only partly been shed. Its arrogance, its presumption of absolute authority lingers.

There are subjects (explorers) and objects (everything else) here. The subjects are gone, only their labels and the objects remain. That’s the way of Subjects and Objects. Subjects can do whatever they want to objects because objects are static things. Objects have no subjectness, no say at all in the matter. They get killed, gutted, stuffed and left for centuries behind glass because that’s what the Subjects wanted.

+ +

Butterflies, Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze, Florence Italy photographed by luxagraf

+ +

This is also the mindset of Columbus, of Cortez — the mindset that says this is a world for the taking. Cortez took gold and left bodies. Early zoologists took bodies and left the gold. It was a gruesome business on both counts. I think it’s important to look at it though, lest we think we are above this somehow now. We are not. This world view is embedded in our myths to this day.

La Specola is a record of the beginnings of these myths, many of things we struggle with today can be seen at their infancy here — the lack of ecology, the lack of ecosophia, the presumption of the watchmaker universe, just sans watchmaker. We still live with these things.

+ +

Great ape, Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze, Florence Italy photographed by luxagraf

+ +

If stuffed and canned dead animals aren’t enough to keep the tourists at bay, then the last two rooms certainly are. The last section of La Specola is nothing but wax models of dissected human bodies, flayed open to varying degrees to show muscle structure, viens, organs and even nerves.

+ +

wax human bodies, Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze, Florence Italy photographed by luxagraf

+ +

The models were created in the 1800s from real human bodies and were used to teach anatomy to medical students. The models are remarkably life-like and cover the entire spectrum of human existence from stillborn, syphilis-riddled fetuses to otherwise healthy adults and even larger-than-life skeletons.

At first glance the wax models are disturbing, not necessarily because they’re life-like, but because they put us on the same shelves, in the same warped glass cases with everything else. More myths being made, turning the mindset of Cortez on ourselves. We are one more animal roaming the planet, better cut us up too.

+ +

Walking out of La Specola, into the bright afternoon world of modern day Florence I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief. The myths created out of story threads like those La Specola has preserved may still dominate our world, but if feels little like they’re slipping, a little like we’re losing faith in these stories. Like these myths no longer reflect the world or our place in it. Like these myths are no longer the way we want to live.

It feels like we are cascading toward something new. Perhaps rediscovering something old as well. It’s a risky time, but also an exciting one. New things always require new explorations, new experiences that shape new ways of thinking, new world views, which in turn will become, far after our time, new myths.

+
The popular definition of myth is roughly, “thing that isn’t true”. That’s a terrible definition. When I refer to myth, I am speaking of an older understanding of the word, that it is a story, an archetype, which helps us make sense of the world around us and figure out our place within it. ↩
+

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + + + +

+ +

Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

+ +

+ + +

+ +

+ + + + +

+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/natural-science.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/natural-science.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bf9972e --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/natural-science.txt @@ -0,0 +1,75 @@ +Natural Science +================ + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Friday, 10 June 2011 + +Florence is crowded. It may well be that [Naples is the only Italian city that isn't overrun with tourists](/jrnl/2011/06/new-pollution) in the summer. Three days without other travelers around left us unprepared for the crowds in Florence. + +

+ +Florence is, admittedly, more of what tourists expect Italy to be. There's no graffiti, the streets are free of trash, and the city looks like something out of a fairy tale, the sort of thing that makes travel writers trot out the clichés -- narrow, winding, stone streets, beautiful river walks, and plenty of English-speaking waiters. And so they come. + +

+ +Luckily it's never that hard to dodge crowds. Sometimes you have to [tour Angkor Wat in the sweltering midday heat](jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat). Other times you need go in the [off season](/jrnl/2008/07/tiny-cities-made-ash). In Florence it's really easy, you just need to get up early and the streets will be deserted. + +

+ +

+ +Once the tourists make it out of bed, get off the streets. Head over to "La Specola", the Museum of Zoology, part of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze. Zoology isn't something near the top of most must-see lists and in my experience, you'll have the place to yourself. + +Of course how much you'll enjoy La Specola depends a little bit on how much you enjoy wandering through rooms filled with dead animals. My father taught biology and zoology for many years, so I grew up around dead animals, but clearly, La Specola is not for everyone. + +Part of the appeal of the museum is simply the antique wooden cabinets used to house the various lions, leopards, monkeys, birds and butterflies. The old, uneven and warped glass ripples as you pass, distorts the view from the corner of your eye, giving all the animals a shimmering hint of movement, as if there were still a bit of life left somewhere behind the glass. + +

+ +La Specola's specimens are old. Most date from the very beginnings of natural science. The visible specimen tags I could read ranged from the early 1700s up through the late 1800s and into the 1900s. A few specimens come from the Medici family's private collection and are even older. That means the vast majority of the animals in La Specola date from well before Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, and some were brought to Florence even before Linnaeus had come up with the means of organizing them. + +

+ +Of course stuffed specimens from 300 years ago aren't going to be in the best of shape. Feathers have fallen off many of the birds, scales have dropped from the fish, the large mammals have badly dried and cracked hides and the natural coloring has long since faded from many. + +What's fascinating isn't so much the specimens themselves, but the glimpse they offer into the curious minds of the time. When La Specola was founded in 1771, western culture was just shrugging off over a thousand of years of monotheist dogma, shifting its gaze from a god to the world itself. New myths, ones that shape our world today[^1], were starting to weave themselves together around this time. La Specola hails from the very beginning of that yearning to know more about the world, to reject monotheist doctrine in favor of actual experience with the world around you, in this case discovering first hand the creatures that share our planet. + +

+ +This is the explosion of exploration, travel and discovery. The "age of discovery" as hindsight has named it. + +But more than that, it's the golden age of the amateur. It's the age of people like you and me, curious about the world and determined to see it for themselves, stumbling around, finding what they found. It was a unique time, there were no professional scientists yet, no authorities or academic review boards. For western Europe, crawling out from under the yoke of monotheism, everything was new, everything was a discovery. + +In the case of amateur zoologists much of what they found was sent back here, to La Specola. + +That's the bright side. But there's something obviously perverse about it all too. Heading out into the world, discovering exotic and fascinating animals and then killing, gutting and stuffing them for the folks back home suggests that yoke of monotheistic dogma has only partly been shed. Its arrogance, its presumption of absolute authority lingers. + +There are subjects (explorers) and objects (everything else) here. The subjects are gone, only their labels and the objects remain. That's the way of Subjects and Objects. Subjects can do whatever they want to objects because objects are static things. Objects have no subjectness, no say at all in the matter. They get killed, gutted, stuffed and left for centuries behind glass because that's what the Subjects wanted. + +

+ +This is also the mindset of Columbus, of Cortez -- the mindset that says this is a world for the taking. Cortez took gold and left bodies. Early zoologists took bodies and left the gold. It was a gruesome business on both counts. I think it's important to look at it though, lest we think we are above this somehow now. We are not. This world view is embedded in our myths to this day. + +La Specola is a record of the beginnings of these myths, many of things we struggle with today can be seen at their infancy here -- the lack of ecology, the lack of ecosophia, the presumption of the watchmaker universe, just sans watchmaker. We still live with these things. + +

+ +If stuffed and canned dead animals aren't enough to keep the tourists at bay, then the last two rooms certainly are. The last section of La Specola is nothing but wax models of dissected human bodies, flayed open to varying degrees to show muscle structure, viens, organs and even nerves. + +

+ +The models were created in the 1800s from real human bodies and were used to teach anatomy to medical students. The models are remarkably life-like and cover the entire spectrum of human existence from stillborn, syphilis-riddled fetuses to otherwise healthy adults and even larger-than-life skeletons. + +At first glance the wax models are disturbing, not necessarily because they're life-like, but because they put us on the same shelves, in the same warped glass cases with everything else. More myths being made, turning the mindset of Cortez on ourselves. We are one more animal roaming the planet, better cut us up too. + +

+ +Walking out of La Specola, into the bright afternoon world of modern day Florence I couldn't help feeling a sense of relief. The myths created out of story threads like those La Specola has preserved may still dominate our world, but if feels little like they're slipping, a little like we're losing faith in these stories. Like these myths no longer reflect the world or our place in it. Like these myths are no longer the way we want to live. + +It feels like we are cascading toward something new. Perhaps rediscovering something old as well. It's a risky time, but also an exciting one. New things always require new explorations, new experiences that shape new ways of thinking, new world views, which in turn will become, far after our time, new myths. + +[^1]: The popular definition of myth is roughly, "thing that isn't true". That's a terrible definition. When I refer to myth, I am speaking of an older understanding of the word, that it is a story, an archetype, which helps us make sense of the world around us and figure out our place within it. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/new-pollution.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/new-pollution.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b72dc53 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/new-pollution.amp @@ -0,0 +1,184 @@ + + + + + + +The New Pollution + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The New Pollution

+ June 6, 2011 + + +

Naples is a big, crowded, graffiti-filled city. It's an intimidating place that is by turns a bit like Philadelphia, a bit Mumbai, a bit some post-apocalyptic video game and, in the end, something else entirely.

The rest of the world abandoned Naples long ago, left it to find its own way, fumbling through some darkness of its own making toward a light it can't yet see.

The old Centro Storico area is a maze of narrow stone streets swarming with scooters dodging shoppers at the morning markets where fresh fruit and dried pasta hang alongside lanterns and trinkets, fishmongers crowd the sidewalks and the smell of pastries and coffee choke the air.

The sun rarely makes it down through the five and six story facades to the streets below. The shadowy world of dark granite streets gives the impression that you're strolling through canyons of carefully cut stone blocks and marble doorways. There are no trees down here, hardly any plants at all. Higher up,, on the second and third stories, a few ferns, some moss and grasses grow on the balconies of abandoned buildings.

Naples is it's own world. I sit outside the hotel watching as people on a balcony down the street lower a bucket down from the fifth story with a few euro inside. The man at the nearby tabac runs over, retrieves the euro and throws a pack of cigarettes inside. The bucket retreats back up into the heights of the buildings, disappearing into a tiny sliver of night sky. Naples, the city time forgot.

Naples is not tourist friendly, it's not even pretty. It's just a city. Most of it is covered in graffiti, and, thanks to strikes and general city mismanagement (read: mob control), garbage. Or at least the city proper is, the old town area is largely trash-free, if only because the streets are so narrow there's simply no room for any trash. The graffiti though is universal, perhaps the one thing that links the old town and the newer portions together.

Pompeii, just thirty minutes away and 2600 years older, was also once covered in ancient Roman graffiti. It's just how they do things here apparently, it's in the blood, in the soil, in the wind. Speak your mind with spray cans -- or whatever might be the tool of the era -- out in the open, for everyone to see.

The main reason any tourist, myself included, comes to Naples is its proximity to Pompeii. Beyond the quick and cheap train out to Pompeii, Naples doesn't have a lot to offer. That's part of it's appeal. Perhaps best appreciated in hindsight, but appeal nonetheless. Still, given the tourist epidemic that sweeps Italy every summer, Naples is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn't, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back.

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/new-pollution.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/new-pollution.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..28db09d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/new-pollution.html @@ -0,0 +1,263 @@ + + + + + The New Pollution - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ +

Home → + +
+ + jrnl + + +

+ + +

The New Pollution

+ +

Napoli (Naples), Italy

+ – Map +

+ June 6, 2011 + +

Naples is a big, crowded, graffiti-filled city. It’s an intimidating place that is by turns a bit like Philadelphia, a bit Mumbai, a bit some post-apocalyptic video game and, in the end, something else entirely.

The rest of the world abandoned Naples long ago, left it to find its own way, fumbling through some darkness of its own making toward a light it can’t yet see.

Street, Naples, Italy

The sun rarely makes it down through the five and six story facades to the streets below. The shadowy world of dark granite streets gives the impression that you’re strolling through canyons of carefully cut stone blocks and marble doorways. There are no trees down here, hardly any plants at all. Higher up,, on the second and third stories, a few ferns, some moss and grasses grow on the balconies of abandoned buildings.

Street, Naples, Italy Even if there were light, there’s no room for trees. There’s hardly any room to move, save when a street opens up into a piazza, where in the evening crowds gather to drink beer or wine, or perhaps to eat in the restaurants that line the edges of the larger squares.

Naples is it’s own world. I sit outside the hotel watching as people on a balcony down the street lower a bucket down from the fifth story with a few euro inside. The man at the nearby tabac runs over, retrieves the euro and throws a pack of cigarettes inside. The bucket retreats back up into the heights of the buildings, disappearing into a tiny sliver of night sky. Naples, the city time forgot.

Naples is not tourist friendly, it’s not even pretty. It’s just a city. Most of it is covered in graffiti, and, thanks to strikes and general city mismanagement (read: mob control), garbage. Or at least the city proper is, the old town area is largely trash-free, if only because the streets are so narrow there’s simply no room for any trash. The graffiti though is universal, perhaps the one thing that links the old town and the newer portions together.

graffiti on the street, Naples, Italy

Pompeii, just thirty minutes away and 2600 years older, was also once covered in ancient Roman graffiti. It’s just how they do things here apparently, it’s in the blood, in the soil, in the wind. Speak your mind with spray cans — or whatever might be the tool of the era — out in the open, for everyone to see.

The main reason any tourist, myself included, comes to Naples is its proximity to Pompeii. Beyond the quick and cheap train out to Pompeii, Naples doesn’t have a lot to offer. That’s part of it’s appeal. Perhaps best appreciated in hindsight, but appeal nonetheless. Still, given the tourist epidemic that sweeps Italy every summer, Naples is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn’t, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back.

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+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/new-pollution.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/new-pollution.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..31b1ded --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/new-pollution.txt @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +The New Pollution +================= + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Monday, 06 June 2011 + +Naples is a big, crowded, graffiti-filled city. It's an intimidating place that is by turns a bit like Philadelphia, a bit Mumbai, a bit some post-apocalyptic video game and, in the end, something else entirely. + +The rest of the world abandoned Naples long ago, left it to find its own way, fumbling through some darkness of its own making toward a light it can't yet see. + +The old Centro Storico area is a maze of narrow stone streets swarming with scooters dodging shoppers at the morning markets where fresh fruit and dried pasta hang alongside lanterns and trinkets, fishmongers crowd the sidewalks and the smell of pastries and coffee choke the air. + + Street, Naples, Italy

+ +The sun rarely makes it down through the five and six story facades to the streets below. The shadowy world of dark granite streets gives the impression that you're strolling through canyons of carefully cut stone blocks and marble doorways. There are no trees down here, hardly any plants at all. Higher up,, on the second and third stories, a few ferns, some moss and grasses grow on the balconies of abandoned buildings. + + Street, Naples, Italy

Even if there were light, there's no room for trees. There's hardly any room to move, save when a street opens up into a piazza, where in the evening crowds gather to drink beer or wine, or perhaps to eat in the restaurants that line the edges of the larger squares. + +Naples is it's own world. I sit outside the hotel watching as people on a balcony down the street lower a bucket down from the fifth story with a few euro inside. The man at the nearby tabac runs over, retrieves the euro and throws a pack of cigarettes inside. The bucket retreats back up into the heights of the buildings, disappearing into a tiny sliver of night sky. Naples, the city time forgot. + +Naples is not tourist friendly, it's not even pretty. It's just a city. Most of it is covered in graffiti, and, thanks to strikes and general city mismanagement (read: mob control), garbage. Or at least the city proper is, the old town area is largely trash-free, if only because the streets are so narrow there's simply no room for any trash. The graffiti though is universal, perhaps the one thing that links the old town and the newer portions together. + + graffiti on the street, Naples, Italy

+ +Pompeii, just thirty minutes away and 2600 years older, was also once covered in ancient Roman graffiti. It's just how they do things here apparently, it's in the blood, in the soil, in the wind. Speak your mind with spray cans -- or whatever might be the tool of the era -- out in the open, for everyone to see. + +The main reason any tourist, myself included, comes to Naples is its proximity to Pompeii. Beyond the quick and cheap train out to Pompeii, Naples doesn't have a lot to offer. That's part of it's appeal. Perhaps best appreciated in hindsight, but appeal nonetheless. Still, given the tourist epidemic that sweeps Italy every summer, Naples is a place worth appreciating for what it is not, even if what is isn't, perhaps, enough to ever bring you back. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/temple-ceremony-ubud.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/temple-ceremony-ubud.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6363e45 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/temple-ceremony-ubud.amp @@ -0,0 +1,196 @@ + + + + + + +The Balinese Temple Ceremony + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The Balinese Temple Ceremony

+ June 19, 2011 + + +

Everything in Bali is two hundred meters from here. The island itself may in fact only be two hundred meters wide and two hundred meters long. To get from here to wherever we are staying? Two hundred meters. To get from here to the temple ceremony we were supposed to be at twenty minutes ago? Just two hundred meters more. The Balinese are either really bad at judging distance or unclear on the English words for numbers larger than two hundred.

We've been walking up this hill for at least 2km and we still haven't caught sight of the temple, though now we can hear the drums, which is encouraging. One last local walks by, "Excuse me, it this the road to Tegallantang? Yes. How much farther is it? "Just up the road. Maybe two hundred meters."

As it turns out, he's the only one to say two hundred meters and literally be right about it.

Two days earlier we were out wandering the streets when it started to rain. We ducked into the nearest restaurant for lunch. Toward the end of the meal, as the rain was dying down and we were getting ready to leave, the owner came over and started talking to us about Ubud. We ordered another beer and in the end he invited us out to his temple to see the temple's anniversary ceremony and procession through the city.

At the time we were thinking of leaving for the islands east of Bali, but we decided to stick around for a couple of extra days to see the temple ceremony.

Ubud grows on you. Sure, it has a lot of traffic and touristy elements and most of the shops sell things at prices roughly equal to what you'd expect in the States, but despite all that there's something about the place. Maybe it's the way every morning the streets are littered with tiny offerings, small banana leaf trays filled with flowers, bits of rice and other food, along with a few sticks of burning incense. Maybe it's the immaculate, constantly tended gardens that grace the courtyards of every restaurant and guesthouse you enter. Maybe it's the really awful, overpriced beer. No. Probably not that, but it does grow on you. Ubud that is, not the beer.

With a few extra days on our hands we rode the motor bike around some more. We also walked around the temples of the sacred monkey forest where we saw one of the namesake gray-haired Macaques (small monkeys) re-enact the opening scene of 2001 with a battered old aerosol can. Eventually it stopped banging the can on the ground and just turned it around, upside down, shook it, bit it, threw it and otherwise seemed to be saying, how do you work this thing?

After four and half days though I'll admit I wasn't expecting much when we walked a couple of kilometers out of Ubud to the village of Tegallantang where we, along with a couple friends we met a few days earlier, met up with our friend from the restaurant.

I've been to a lot of Hindu temples. Enough in fact that I don't feel the need to see any more, but Balinese temples are considerably different than Hindu temples in India. While Balinese temples look partly like Hindu temples in India, there are other elements that come from older religions. Bali is what happens when Hindu beliefs collide with animism. The Balinese seem to embrace the basic tenants of traditional Hinduism, but then add plenty of their own animist flourishes to the mix -- like frequent and elaborate temple ceremonies.

By the time we arrived the temple portion of the ceremony was already over, which is just as well because it felt vaguely intrusive to be the only white people standing outside the temple, and would have felt even more so if they had invited us in. And I have no doubt they would have, as we seemed to be the only people uneasy with our presence. I'm always wary of being that guy, the obnoxious tourist thrusting a camera in everyone's face. I even carry a long telephoto lens just so I can avoid being that guy.

However, despite the fact that the ceremony was not a public spectacle by any means, the procession most definitely was, since it was headed for the heart of Ubud, down to the meeting of the two rivers which is both a sacred sight for the locals and tourist central for the city. Perhaps that's why no one seemed to mind us standing around the temple.

When we arrived only the men were at the temple. Most of them were turned out in immaculate white sarongs crisply tied without a fold out of place, topped with white shirts. Boys as young as five or six on up to teenagers were lined up to carry giant umbrellas, flags and various silk emblems which towered high above their heads on bamboo poles. The brigade of youngsters and the fluttering banners made up the front of the procession back to Ubud. The umbrellas and banners were used to shade the effigies of gods and demons that made up the middle of the procession.

The older men came next split into two groups, those warming up on drums, flutes and other musical instruments, and those still inside the temple, loading up the various offerings and even stone shrines, all of which they carried in groups, the weight slung between two long bamboo poles that rested on the shoulders of eight and sometimes ten men.

Once the men had all taken their places, as if on cue (though more likely via the walkie talkies some of the elders carried), the women arrived dressed in elaborate sarongs of rich gold and red silk. Most of the women, even the very young girls, wore thick coats of makeup on their faces, giving them a doll-like appearance reminiscent of Japanese geishas, though I'm pretty sure that wasn't the image they had in mind.

Then, as with any parade you've ever seen, the band struck up a song. The children moved out in front, the older women placed their baskets on their heads, the men picked up their offerings and shrines and the whole affair began the slow walking march through the hills down into Ubud. We brought up the rear, the token tourists trailing the procession through the rice paddies and down the hill, past shops and restaurants, houses and even a resort or two until the street widened and eventually reached the main road through Ubud.

At that point we broke off and went up to a second story restaurant to have a beer and a bit of a snack, content to watch from a distance. As we sat upstairs in the fading light we watched as the river of white shirts hit the main road and flowed right, turning toward the city center, gradually growing smaller until the last white shirts disappeared down the hill.

+ + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/temple-ceremony-ubud.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/temple-ceremony-ubud.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5d3e285 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/temple-ceremony-ubud.html @@ -0,0 +1,402 @@ + + + + + The Balinese Temple Ceremony - by Scott Gilbertson + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

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Home → + +
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The Balinese Temple Ceremony

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Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

+ – Map +

+ June 19, 2011 + +

We’ve been walking up this hill for at least 2km and we still haven’t caught sight of the temple, though now we can hear the drums, which is encouraging. One last local walks by, “Excuse me, it this the road to Tegallantang? Yes. How much farther is it? “Just up the road. Maybe two hundred meters.”

As it turns out, he’s the only one to say two hundred meters and literally be right about it.

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Elephant Caves, Ubud, Bali photographed by luxagraf

+ +

Two days earlier we were out wandering the streets when it started to rain. We ducked into the nearest restaurant for lunch. Toward the end of the meal, as the rain was dying down and we were getting ready to leave, the owner came over and started talking to us about Ubud. We ordered another beer and in the end he invited us out to his temple to see the temple’s anniversary ceremony and procession through the city.

At the time we were thinking of leaving for the islands east of Bali, but we decided to stick around for a couple of extra days to see the temple ceremony.

Ubud grows on you. Sure, it has a lot of traffic and touristy elements and most of the shops sell things at prices roughly equal to what you’d expect in the States, but despite all that there’s something about the place. Maybe it’s the way every morning the streets are littered with tiny offerings, small banana leaf trays filled with flowers, bits of rice and other food, along with a few sticks of burning incense. Maybe it’s the immaculate, constantly tended gardens that grace the courtyards of every restaurant and guesthouse you enter. Maybe it’s the really awful, overpriced beer. No. Probably not that, but it does grow on you. Ubud that is, not the beer.

With a few extra days on our hands we did a lot of walking. We walked around the temples of the sacred monkey forest where we saw one of the namesake gray-haired Macaques (small monkeys) re-enact the opening scene of 2001 with a battered old aerosol can. Eventually it stopped banging the can on the ground and just turned it around, upside down, shook it, bit it, threw it and otherwise seemed to be saying, how do you work this thing?

+ +

Gray Macaques, Ubud, Bali photographed by luxagraf

+ +

After four and half days though I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting much when we walked a couple of kilometers out of Ubud to the village of Tegallantang where we, along with a couple friends we met a few days earlier, met up with our friend from the restaurant.

I’ve been to a lot of Hindu temples. Enough in fact that I don’t feel the need to see any more, but Balinese temples are considerably different than Hindu temples in India. While Balinese temples look partly like Hindu temples in India, there are other elements that come from older religions. Bali is what happens when Hindu beliefs collide with animism. The Balinese seem to embrace the basic tenants of traditional Hinduism, but then add plenty of their own animist flourishes to the mix — like frequent and elaborate temple ceremonies.

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men waiting for temple ceremony to begin, ubud, bali Pomp and circumstance and nose picking. photographed by luxagraf

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Children waiting for temple ceremony to begin, Ubud, Bali photographed by luxagraf

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boy picking nose at temple ceremony, ubud, bali photographed by luxagraf — Pomp and circumstance and nose picking.

+ +

By the time we arrived the temple portion of the ceremony was already over, which is just as well because it felt vaguely intrusive to be the only white people standing outside the temple, and would have felt even more so if they had invited us in. And I have no doubt they would have, as we seemed to be the only people uneasy with our presence. I’m always wary of being that guy, the obnoxious tourist thrusting a camera in everyone’s face. I even carry a long telephoto lens just so I can avoid being that guy.

However, despite the fact that the ceremony was not a public spectacle by any means, the procession most definitely was, since it was headed for the heart of Ubud, down to the meeting of the two rivers which is both a sacred sight for the locals and tourist central for the city. Perhaps that’s why no one seemed to mind us standing around the temple.

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Effigies, ceremony procession, Tegallantang, Bali photographed by luxagraf

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temple procession, Ubud, Bali photographed by luxagraf

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Once the men had all taken their places, as if on cue (though more likely via the walkie talkies some of the elders carried), the women arrived dressed in elaborate sarongs of rich gold and red silk. Most of the women, even the very young girls, wore thick coats of makeup on their faces, giving them a doll-like appearance reminiscent of Japanese geishas, though I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the image they had in mind.

+ +

Then, as with any parade you’ve ever seen, the band struck up a song. The children moved out in front, the older women placed their baskets on their heads, the men picked up their offerings and shrines and the whole affair began the slow walking march through the hills down into Ubud. We brought up the rear, the token tourists trailing the procession through the rice paddies and down the hill, past shops and restaurants, houses and even a resort or two until the street widened and eventually reached the main road through Ubud.

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temple ceremony procession, Ubud, Bali photographed by luxagraf

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Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

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+ + + + + + + diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/temple-ceremony-ubud.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/temple-ceremony-ubud.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..af0e172 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2011/06/temple-ceremony-ubud.txt @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +The Balinese Temple Ceremony +============================ + + by Scott Gilbertson + + Sunday, 19 June 2011 + +Everything in Bali is two hundred meters from here. The island itself may in fact only be two hundred meters wide and two hundred meters long. To get from here to wherever we are staying? Two hundred meters. To get from here to the temple ceremony we were supposed to be at twenty minutes ago? Just two hundred meters more. The Balinese are either really bad at judging distance or unclear on the English words for numbers larger than two hundred. + +We've been walking up this hill for at least 2km and we still haven't caught sight of the temple, though now we can hear the drums, which is encouraging. One last local walks by, "Excuse me, it this the road to Tegallantang? Yes. How much farther is it? "Just up the road. Maybe two hundred meters." + +As it turns out, he's the only one to say two hundred meters and literally be right about it. + +

+ +Two days earlier we were out wandering the streets when it started to rain. We ducked into the nearest restaurant for lunch. Toward the end of the meal, as the rain was dying down and we were getting ready to leave, the owner came over and started talking to us about Ubud. We ordered another beer and in the end he invited us out to his temple to see the temple's anniversary ceremony and procession through the city. + +At the time we were thinking of leaving for the islands east of Bali, but we decided to stick around for a couple of extra days to see the temple ceremony. + +Ubud grows on you. Sure, it has a lot of traffic and touristy elements and most of the shops sell things at prices roughly equal to what you'd expect in the States, but despite all that there's something about the place. Maybe it's the way every morning the streets are littered with tiny offerings, small banana leaf trays filled with flowers, bits of rice and other food, along with a few sticks of burning incense. Maybe it's the immaculate, constantly tended gardens that grace the courtyards of every restaurant and guesthouse you enter. Maybe it's the really awful, overpriced beer. No. Probably not that, but it does grow on you. Ubud that is, not the beer. + + +With a few extra days on our hands we did a lot of walking. We walked around the temples of the sacred monkey forest where we saw one of the namesake gray-haired Macaques (small monkeys) re-enact the opening scene of 2001 with a battered old aerosol can. Eventually it stopped banging the can on the ground and just turned it around, upside down, shook it, bit it, threw it and otherwise seemed to be saying, [how do you work this thing](http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/05/051106.html)? + +

+ +After four and half days though I'll admit I wasn't expecting much when we walked a couple of kilometers out of Ubud to the village of Tegallantang where we, along with a couple friends we met a few days earlier, met up with our friend from the restaurant. + +I've been to a lot of Hindu temples. Enough in fact that I don't feel the need to see any more, but Balinese temples are considerably different than Hindu temples in India. While Balinese temples look partly like Hindu temples in India, there are other elements that come from older religions. Bali is what happens when Hindu beliefs collide with animism. The Balinese seem to embrace the basic tenants of traditional Hinduism, but then add plenty of their own animist flourishes to the mix -- like frequent and elaborate temple ceremonies. + +

+ +By the time we arrived the temple portion of the ceremony was already over, which is just as well because it felt vaguely intrusive to be the only white people standing outside the temple, and would have felt even more so if they had invited us in. And I have no doubt they would have, as we seemed to be the only people uneasy with our presence. I'm always wary of being that guy, the obnoxious tourist thrusting a camera in everyone's face. I even carry a long telephoto lens just so I can avoid being that guy. + +However, despite the fact that the ceremony was not a public spectacle by any means, the procession most definitely was, since it was headed for the heart of Ubud, down to the meeting of the two rivers which is both a sacred sight for the locals and tourist central for the city. Perhaps that's why no one seemed to mind us standing around the temple. + +When we arrived only the men were at the temple. Most of them were turned out in immaculate white sarongs crisply tied without a fold out of place, topped with white shirts. Boys as young as five or six on up to teenagers were lined up to carry giant umbrellas, flags and various silk emblems which towered high above their heads on bamboo poles. The brigade of youngsters and the fluttering banners made up the front of the procession back to Ubud. The umbrellas and banners were used to shade the effigies of gods and demons that made up the middle of the procession. + +

+ +

+ +The older men came next split into two groups, those warming up on drums, flutes and other musical instruments, and those still inside the temple, loading up the various offerings and even stone shrines, all of which they carried in groups, the weight slung between two long bamboo poles that rested on the shoulders of eight and sometimes ten men. + +

+ +Once the men had all taken their places, as if on cue (though more likely via the walkie talkies some of the elders carried), the women arrived dressed in elaborate sarongs of rich gold and red silk. Most of the women, even the very young girls, wore thick coats of makeup on their faces, giving them a doll-like appearance reminiscent of Japanese geishas, though I'm pretty sure that wasn't the image they had in mind. + +

+ +Then, as with any parade you've ever seen, the band struck up a song. The children moved out in front, the older women placed their baskets on their heads, the men picked up their offerings and shrines and the whole affair began the slow walking march through the hills down into Ubud. We brought up the rear, the token tourists trailing the procession through the rice paddies and down the hill, past shops and restaurants, houses and even a resort or two until the street widened and eventually reached the main road through Ubud. + +At that point we broke off and went up to a second story restaurant to have a beer and a bit of a snack, content to watch from a distance. As we sat upstairs in the fading light we watched as the river of white shirts hit the main road and flowed right, turning toward the city center, gradually growing smaller until the last white shirts disappeared down the hill. + +

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