Skip to main content

Give Back My Land

This is absolutely beautiful calligraphy. You can feel General Yueh Fei's passion and love for his land. The strokes evoke a forcefulness and power of one who lives by the sword. Four simple characters written with such intensity, you can almost see the great hero himself writing the words and feel as he must have felt---knowing that your emperor has betrayed and forsaken you and plans your eventual murder and that you may never see the day your land is recovered from the northern barbarians.

I need to put more passion into my calligraphy. This is the step that transforms mere stroke work into art.

Anyways, today was supposed to be my loner day. Every now and then I just need to get away from friends and do my own thing. I like having this kind of individualism; get away from the crowd. It's so much less noisy. I think everyone needs to be able to live with who they are and be happy about it. Enjoy your own company. I know I can and do. I have plenty of interests and this gives me time to pursue them. Unfortunately (or rather, perhaps an act of some higher power) I was persuaded to go hiking with a large (15+) group of friends on a beautiful day. That was fun too, though I have to say they were hella noisy, so I walked about 5-10 minutes ahead of the whole group. It's so much quieter ahead of the group, and I really got to enjoy the scenery that way. I just hope no one thought I didn't enjoy their company. It's just I didn't want any company today.

Calligraphy from here. Photo from YM Chen.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbyes

It's hard saying goodbye. A good friend of mine is leaving Duke to return to Paris. He was fed up with the physics program here, and after securing a position in France, decided to return home. It's unfortunate that the department here could not do more to help, as he was genuinely bright; unfortunately he was suffering from depression, probably induced by the stresses of the PhD program as well as the dull boring city of Durham. In general how does one say goodbye? You don't really, especially if you're good friends. You just end up saying hello less often. At least that's my take. Unfortunately, more on goodbyes, it's goodbye to Duke's NCAA hopes for this year. We were outplayed by LSU. Sure the refs were really not entirely fair (from our point of view of course), but they closed our top scorer down. It was a fun run, and I enjoyed watching them play, especially since I thought they played such great team basketball, but it's over. Such a somber posti...
Post a Comment
Read more

FAO Schwarz!

Found this on Funny Times: What New Toys Did You Get? (compiled by Phil Proctor) Capitalism: He who dies with the most toys, wins. Hari Krishna: He who plays with the most toys, wins. Judaism: He who buys toys at the lowest price, wins. Catholicism: He who denis himself the most toys, wins. Anglican: They were our toys first. Greek Orthodox: No, they were ours first. Branch Davidians: He who dies playing with the biggest toys, wins. Atheism: There is no toy maker. Polytheism: There are many toy makers. Evolutionism: The toys made themselves. Church of Christ, Scientist: We are the toys. Communism: Everyone gets the same number of toys, and you go straight to the opposite of heaven if we catch you selling yours. B'Hai: All toys are just fine with us. Amish: Toys with batteries are surely a sin. Buddhism: Wanting toys causes suffering. They either break, or you outgrow them. Taoism: The doll is as important as the dump truck. Mormonism: Every boy may have as many toys as he wants. Vo...
Post a Comment
Read more

John Bardeen

I'm reading the biography of John Bardeen, co-inventor of the transistor and co-author of the BCS theory of superconductivity. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics for each of these discoveries, making him the only person ever to win two Nobels in the same category. The book is "True Genius---The Life and Science of John Bardeen" by Hoddeson and Daitch. He's not as well known to the public as Einstein or Feynman, but his contributions to science are up there with the greats. Here's a quote that I find very wise, from a man not known for saying much. People have said about Bardeen, "he doesn't say much, but when he does say something, you pay attention." "I feel that science cannot provide an answer to the ultimate questions about the meaning and purpose of life. With religion, one can get answers on faith. Most scientists leave them open and perhaps unanswerable, but do abide by a code of moral values. For civilized society to succeed, there must be ...
Post a Comment
Read more