Oh! Above ordinary men you are! I started "Red Cliff" early this morning. The first ten minutes are nearly spiritual in their magnificence!
You know I really can't think of a better way to gain a quick but accurate understand the "Times" in which the authors of the I-Ching lived. "They were the best of times, they were the worst of times" Dickenson
Perhaps "best of times" may be stretching it a bit. "Victory at Sea" is sure packed with violence, but "Red Cliff" certainly has plenty of it too. I may easily be wrong, but it looks like 200 AD China was more sophisticated in the art of war than the Romans of the same time were. Not to mention pleasingly aesthetic as well.
Yep, it was a tv schedule filler back when I was a wee bairn. 1952 or '53--but I was probably at least ten when I saw it. I don't know why but I think I found "Red Cliff" to be less "miraculous" than I think you did. Perhaps because I'm like the Italians when it comes to subtitles, I don't like them because they make you work and detract from what native speakers see on the screen. And 4.8 hours is too long. I think a shorter version may have graced Chinese movie screens. Granted, it is one hell of a production worthy of accolades. It's my fault that I'm not fluent in Mandarin, apologies.
I have no doubt that my personal interest in that particular period may have colored and enhanced my appreciation. Unless we are linguists if we want to get the flavor of worlds other than our own,... (Tell me we in Seattle live in the same world as Those in Bahrain.) Then we must learn to do subtitles! But if you enjoyed I'm happy. (If not try harder next viewing)":O}
AFAIK, the sages of what became the I-Ching lived millenia before 200 AD as well as in that time period. Two members of Bahrain's royal family attended the same school I did in England a million years ago. The were OK people but they spoke not too much English. I find it hard to believe that one of them may be the king of that tiny country today. I've never liked royal families. That little spot on the map is home to one of our naval fleets. As far as I can tell it's a good solid right wing country. Completely unlike our home from sea to shiny sea.
Yes before and after. But China changed very little in that period. The pace of what we would call "progress" was much slower. But I'm not one whose paid much attention to dates and times. My interest has always gone to the meaning of the time. A time that is always recurring in it's cyclic pattern. "They were the best of times They were the worst of times." It all depends on where you are standing when it all comes down."
I should probably say the the I-Ching is a compendium.it's not known who made the first or last contribution to the Oracle...or if the last contribution has been made.. But it was created over a period of...thousands of years! Well over a couple of thousand years anyway. Some of it's contributors were thousands of years apart. This book records history in way that no other does. China's history, poetry, Calligraphy, myth and the words of her great sages all find a home. The oracular aspects dates back to the Turtle shell Oracle , where a turtle was dropped in boiling water and then the cracks were read. Naturally this took a gift for divination. So there is no fixed date for it's beginnings and There may not be a fixed time for it's completion. Although I doubt if ours is a time in which further development might occur.
How kind of them, dropping a turtle into boiling water. Such cruelty is rampant today, maybe humans are simply not perfectible? Perhaps "may you live in an interesting time" is especially true for today? Maybe everyone in history thought that the preceding sentence applied to them?
Alas we still drop turtles into the boiling abyss...But now we waste a perfectly good change to ask a good question of the gods. Now we just eat them":O} I once raised calves, such big brown eyes with lashes long and lovely. If they couldn't talk me out of being a meat eater...what hope is there for cows let alone turtles!":O}
Did you really raise calves? I had no idea. Been away for a few days spending time with my oldest friend, it was lovely to see her, I wish life wasn't bearing down on her so hard.
Yeah, in my early 20s a group people and I got our hands on 33 ac we raised or tried to raise calves not at all the fun you might think!';O]
Urbanites tend to romanticize life on the farm. It's really an unrelenting mountain of work as far as I can tell. It's cool that you have that on your resume!
Yeah, I get to say stuff like.."and then we lost the farm." But I don't because we were pikers, a nice group of young people who had no idea of what we didn't know. trying to learn knowledge that almost has to be inherited. Once inherited it is your way of life. That's what it means to real farmers, they lose the way of life they were born to. I can only imagine the pain of that amputation of the land...with no where left to stand and say this is my own, gifted to me by my own ones. My heart goes out to dispossessed farmers. Our foods suffer their loss as Monsanto poisons the Earth that cannot long survive without real farms and real farmers. Sorry about the rant!?
Saying negative things about Monsanto and its cohorts is in no way ranting. Poisoning the planet and all living things is their profit center, it matters not to them that we die as they accumulate more lucre. I think it's a safe bet that those evil people at the top eat strictly organic everything.
What goes around comes around. I have no doubt that they will get theirs. They will try to say that it is ours, but they will get theirs.
