The Field-Watcher When in the shadows of the passing day A seat is found, asleep in calm Soundness, as activity of the mind Cease, and the slow and wavy dreams Of reality vanish by timeless Art, he who observes the secrets Of the fast-forgotten world finds purpose Insensible to sleep, remnant Of future life. The fullness of the stars Softly infuse the distant sky With rays of obscure light, the horizon Ever holds the dawn in glimmer. Douglas Thornton 2018
September 16th, 2014 Lho 3180m. Arrived in the buffer zone of Tibet. The landscape has gone from jungle to high plateau in the matter of a week. Aside from all this though, there is something more pervasive, it is as if we have crossed an invisible barrier and now the opposites that seemed so far apart--good and bad, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, all those things perhaps which define our lives--have been gathered into one original intention, the place where all things start. Maybe it was that the first breath, the first thought, or the first idea, came down from such high mountains. It is difficult not to fall in to the feeling that something sacred is at work, but the contradictory nature of all things at this level of altitude, perhaps even at this level of moral judgment, is of far greater importance and exceeds any majority. Temples have appeared out of the clouds; people come back from the higher altitudes looking dazed and enter in and out of the tea-house