A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. – Lau Tzu (600 ~ 300 BC)
the one aural constant in our past 5 months in croatia and france is the crowing of roosters. it is a magic sound. i grew up on a farm on paradise prairie in washington state in the 1950s, and the sound takes me back to more innocent, hopeful times. it’s a beautiful, evocative sound, metaphoric. brings to mind the new day, beginning light, ending darkness, hope, possibility. and thanks to peter denying christ 3 times before the cock crew, it hearkens as well of betrayal, cowardice, and mythology. it is double edged – befitting a sound which separates night and day – although we’ve discovered roosters start crowing way before dawn, and keep crowing all day long. basically if they’re awake, they crow. america prints the sound as cock-a-doodle-doo, while croatia uses ku-ku-ri-ku… this made me curious, so i looked up this list of world rooster sounds:
Afrikaans: koekelekoe / Albanian: kiki ri ki / Catalan: kikkirikà / Chinese (Mandarin): gou gou / Croatian: ku-ku-ri-ku / Danish: kykkeliky / Dutch: kukeleku / English: cock-a-doodle-doo / Esperanto: kokeriko / Estonian: kikerikii / Finnish: kukkokiekuu / French: cocorico / German: kickeriki / Greek: ki-kiriki / Hebrew: kukuriku / Hindi: kukru:ku: / Hungarian: kukurikuuuu / Indonesian: kikeriku / Italian: chicchirichà / Japanese: kokekokkoo / Korean: kko-kki-yo / Macedonian: kukuriku / Norwegian: kykeliky / Polish: kukuryku / Portuguese (Portugual): cocorococo / Russian: ku-ka-re-ku / Spanish (Spain): kikirikà / Spanish (Argentina): ki-kiri-ki / Swedish: kuckeliku / Thai: ake-e-ake-ake / Turkish: kuk-kurri-kuuu / Ukrainian: kukuriku
started two books of short stories by Julian Barnes and Martin Amis. in each, the first story was so good, i got excited. second story was mediocre, so quit. the 2 excellent stories were Interference by Barnes and God’s Dice by Amis. started 3rd book of stories by John Updike – each story impresses me and keeps me reading on – the man has some chops. folks who can write even 1 fantastic story impress the heck out of me. may i be as worthy some day.
continuing with talent – the mySpace online world is showing me how many truly talented creative people there are out there in art, music, word, attitude – the whole shebang.
shebang – now there’s an interesting word… wikipedia says Shebang is a word meaning “any matter of present concern; thing; business” (1869). It is most frequently used in the phrase “the whole shebang”, which first appeared in written records in 1862. “The whole chebang” [sic] was used to mean “a building and everything in it”. Later, Mark Twain used it to describe a vehicle, as well as “any matter of present concern”. It is suspected to originate from the French word char-a-banc, which is a bus-like wagon with a lot of seats, but no specific connection has been proven as of now.
anyway, i used to brood about not being famous for my art – but i see from mySpace there are thousands of artists out there just as talented as i. however in poetry, i hold my own. more folk make good art than write good poetry. i’ve always said art is easy, poetry hard. and so far no one out there seems to have a back story as rich as mine (here’s a taste… read Back In Black In White Film Noir which was published last month by The Delinquent in england).
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. – Lao Tzu (600 ~ 300 BC)
