Hurricane Sandy

ཆར་གྱིས་མཁར་ལ་གནོད་ན་ཡང་།།

འཇིག་རྟེན་པ་རྣམས་དགའ་བ་སྐྱེ།།

     - ས་སྐྱ་པཎྜི་ཏ

Even if rain damages a mansion,

It brings joy to worldly beings.

- Sakya Pandita

Here comes hurricane Sandy.

Ideas

བསམ་བློ་ཡག་པོ་གཏོང་།།

བསམ་བློ་མ་བརྗེད་དང་།།

Think a good thought

Don't forget the thought

A drawing / verse I did recently. It's on paper I brought back from Nepal. 

Remix

Here is a remix I did of the American Green x-mas track We Floated Through The Town Freely In A Weightless Condition.

Tumbl for ya

Well it looks like Tumblr is not working out so I guess I'll just go back to posting here ... 

Tumblr

The dissertation is currently eating all of my available words. So, I'm trying out a tumblr to see if it is easier for posting my drawings, photos, and sounds. Here it is: 

http://philosophnic.tumblr.com/

10/26 : Nevermind. Tumblr sucks.

Sometimes they happen

Had a headache today and did this drawing. Other than the headache, everything is good. Working on the dissertation blah blah blah.

Quite a title page

Say what you will about Chandra Das' 1902 dictionary, it has a beautiful title page ...

Eight Scenes of Worry

I've put up a new comic that I drew this past year in Kathmandu, Nepal. It's called Eight Scenes of Worry. I've been trying to kick the habit of worrying too much and it was cathartic to draw what it feels like to be worried. I think I'm starting to improve ...

It's drawn on handmade paper and was drawn mostly by candlelight.

Aaron

I haven't been blogging much but I recently went to Michigan to attend the memorial service for my friend Aaron Anderson so I thought I'd write something about him. Aaron and I went to college together and went on a study abroad to Tibet in 2003. I didn't hang out with him very frequently outside of Tibet, but every few months he'd show up at my place with some beers and a stack of records. It was really great just hanging out and playing snippets of songs we liked.

Even when things were rough in Tibet, Aaron was never one to complain and it was nice to hear from his family and close friends that this never changed even at the end. Aaron was one of the first people I met who didn't just know a lot about music (he did know a hell of a lot) but always managed to express how much he loved it. Though he owned records worth more than my car, he found this cassette tape in the street in Lhasa and was so excited that we went to buy a cheap player that night to hear it. As a Buddhist he was neither preachy nor new age, something that at the time I thought was impossible for a Western Buddhist. I wish I had been better friends with him, but I'm glad to have known him and he's someone I'll never forget.  

(You can make a donation to Neurofibromatosis research here)

Back In America

Here's a photo I took of some graffiti in Bangkok. These days I'm back in America. I've been getting settled and started working on dissertation things again. I gave the Tibetan dictionary a little facelift, but it still had a lot of content problems to fix. 

Got lucky and hurricane Irene missed us. Other than that not much is new. New photos and drawings to come. 

Goodbye KTM

I leave Kathmandu tomorrow (for Bangkok, then Providence). When I got here I hated it but now I think I will miss it. That's always how it goes, right? 

My Tibetan

Anybody who has heard me speak Tibetan knows that I have a habit of saying 're wa' (རེད་བ་) a lot; it means something like "right?" or "isn't it?" (or maybe like desune in Japanese).

I'm saying "Lhasa is a nice place, right? Tibet has a lot of yaks, right? It's good, right? Right? Right? Right?" and the bottom text says "My way of speaking, right?"

Blue.

Amen. (source)

You guys got any bikes?

I'm finally remembering to take my camera with me sometimes when I go out. I assume this is some kind of bicycle repair shop ...

The difference between Kathmandu and Baltimore ...

I've been watching a lot of The Wire on my laptop. If you don't know, it's a really great show about police and drug dealing set in Baltimore. Anyway, it must be getting into my brain because I saw someone toss out a bag of trash from their window and immediately assumed it was drugs ...