A farm girl caught in a city life,
Primal simplicity wasted not
On the severed souls she helped.
O, that we too could find simpleness.

That we have,
In the picture of love among us,
Like the servant farmer before her,
The daughter’s incense rises above.

______________________________

Happy 60th birthday, Mom. I hope the poem says it all. I just wish I had not been inspired at two in the morning.

[My wife] got the D40, it was an eBay buy. I wish that we had a better lens, it came with a lower end model. We are saving up and hoping to get a better one soon, they are all just so stinking expensive. It has been great, though, being able to catch those moments with [our kid] that you normally wouldn’t because of the slow shutter speed on the point and shoot digital. I know there are some ways to tweaking the camera so you can get a little better shot out of it, but I haven’t had the chance to play with it enough.

What new lens should my friend buy? Are there some not so expensive lenses out there for amateur photographers on a limited budget? I have just the answer.

Since we are speaking of a Nikon D40 (and the D60 would be the same answer), I would highly suggest a lens that Nikon just came out with a few months ago: AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 G. That is techy gibberish to many of you, so I will break that down and tell you how that applies, but first, I will give the simple explanation.

The “standard” lens for 35mm film cameras is a 50mm lens, and it is standard because it gives a perspective very close to what the human eye would. That standard is dependent on the size of the film or sensor, though. Most digital cameras out there (except for some of the pro-level ones) have a smaller sized sensor, and the stardard length of lens is no longer 50mm. On the smaller-sized-sensor digital SLRs out there today (regardless of brand), a 35mm lens is going to give that standard perspective. Basically that standard perspective is not too telephoto (long) nor is it too wide angle (short). It is in the middle and great for wide variety of everyday shots.

So, that Nikon lens mentioned above is made specifically for the smaller sized sensor cameras. You get that standard perspective, with a very wide open aperture (that is the f/1.8 part), at a very cheap price ($200). That is a steal.

Nikon and Canon also have out cheap 50mm prime (fixed focal length, non-zoom lenses) lenses with a nice, open aperture: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 D and Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II. And when I say cheap, I am talking $100 kind of cheap. (note: See the comments below; Nikon D40, D40x, and D60 cannot auto focus with the 50mm f/1.8). It is a great addition if you just need more light than that cheapo kit lens will give you. The only downside is that 50mm on a smaller sensor is a little too long of a lens for many situations. Just set your kit lens to 50mm all day and shoot around and see what you think. Do the same at 35mm and see which you like better.

I talk a lot about aperture because it is really the most important part of the lens choosing process. The smaller that number, the bigger the aperture (hole), the more light the lens will let in. If the aperture is more open, that means either shutter speed can increase taking care of your blur problem or your ISO (film speed) can decrease thus keeping grain out of your photos. Lens prices are basically set by the aperture…just look for yourself.

The prices are great on these lenses, and you really get great quality for the money. More than likely, you will find yourself using this fixed length prime lens much more than your zoom lens. Once you get used to that wide open aperture, it is hard to go back.

Resplend.

Are we the seeing beings we think we are?
Do we know all we think we know?
I suggest a life beyond ourselves.

Transcend.

Your words of patience slay my hardened heart,
A sacrifice for love you have yet gained;
Aroma sweet burns off the dross of years.

You wait for me to move past pain and scars,
Yet here I stand with thought of no past wound;
This painful wound is seen by none but you.

Unknown but given just to bring you near,
You came with thoughts of healing pain and hurt,
And with your coming dawns my greatest hope.

With eye I see your beauty and appeal,
But heart will read the source of that desire:
A gentleness that brings forth patient grace.

Your constant grace is beauty unto me,
Fulfillment of our years is my sole sight;
I know no scars or pain of what has past.

To show shared fates, I draw you close to me,
Vulnerability is brought to naught
Unwittingly responding to love’s source.

Love promised fore the failure at the tree
And founded in Almighty’s bosom will
Obtain the seal of love’s great sacrifice.

Though words you speak speak not to present cares
Your meaning tells of ages worth of work
Brought to this moment: turning, joining all.

The colors and the strands that fill your speech
Come to perfection in your locked gold;
No memory of past brun pains can last.

Unlocked before my eyes: gold, never sought
But always needed, for my blackened heart;
Do I deserve such riches? Say I do.

My empathy for years spent urges me
To wait as you have waited for your day.
Yet should I hold fulfillment past its time?

No, I will let it come to my embrace
And fill my heart to all completion as
Its satisfaction’s found in sacrifice.

The future set, all time arranged beyond
What asking and imagining can see.
A dream: this beauty pictured in one night.

All sundered, unfulfilled, perfection split;
Confusion fogs a newly wakened eye,
What is and what is not, I have not found.

In likesame gentleness my God drew near
to bring courageous faith to move my heart
toward that one arrangement blessed by him.

For answer he has given a waking dream:
Unceasingly filled by him till the time
When golden treasure promised comes with grace.

Now, day dreaming of opened locks long closed,
Perceiving patience soothing with its words,
And eyes that always love, eyes never closed.

Innocent they lead me to my most desired place,
Child-like, clinging to the waist of the one they most love.

An even pastel, the pleasant and soothing setting,
Smoothing edges, preparing for friends to come in peace.

Simplest of fabrics, drawing no attention but in serving,
Bringing to each their wants with reward only in joy.

Thus, the gentle night breeze guides my mind to thoughts of home.

Four of us hitched a ride with a delivery minitruck, and, on the way to our cutoff, missed numerous great opportunities to stop and relish the beauty walking would have provided. Finally, I asked the others if they would mind walking the remainder, and with all positive responses, we jumped off and walked along the road with a waterfall, views of the terraced mountain fields, and distant farmers carrying crops on their shoulders up and down mountain faces.

With directions about “a stone trail just around the mountain curve there,” we found our path leading away from the road and up to a small village, and took the first steps toward what we thought was going to be an average mountain slope type Dong village–we initially headed toward this village because of a museum (yes, up on a mountain side) that turned out being not much more than a just started shell. Heading up the trail, with only an educated hunch of where we were headed, we simply hailed a farmer on a nearby mountain side who, though in Dong, sufficiently communicated that we were on the right path. Up we went, with glimpses now and then of a house roof or village gate. We had taken little time to look back, and thus were innocently drawn into this mountain community with little idea of their view of the world.

Though we thought it was just the area weather, we imperceptibly ascended into their cloud city, not so out of reach, but clearly different. About the time we reached the main village entrance, mist and drizzle began falling, marking the line between their cloud and all others. The entrance was a small bridge wedged between to inclines covering the waterfalling stream that would guide us further in and higher up to greater beauties.

With the bridge as a temporary dry center of movement, we maneuvered around for views up into the diversly wooded parts of the village visible, and down, as a watchman on a wall, toward all places below. After a few moments of rest, the stream lead us up to a proper village gate and into the village itself. Here everything changed, everything from sanitation habits to gardening tastes. All was quiet; all was purposeful.

Walking through the domestic heart of the village, filled with houses, outhouses, smoke houses, and dog houses, we began to ascend to the upper edge. The best was saved for highest. We first walked under the cover of the drum tower, and briefly enjoying its beauty, were instantly drawn to the fountain just a level of steps higher, where all the people, seeming to have hidden when we walked the lower domestic section of the village, congregated for pails of spring water, stream clothes washing on the smoothed rock platform, or vegetable cleaning in a separate pool. This was the village center, the heart.

Something about the fountain head drew attention, despite the fact that the spring water was pouring out of a rock face just below a small etched face, protruding from the rock. The water poured out into a stone carved basin, which was atop a five foot graduated pillar of stone. The water bowl has two spouts carved in for easy filling of pails of water without dipping or back bending. The constant dual stream falls a few feet down to the pool below, where on the left the stream flows down into the pool to provide a double spring fed, crystal clear pool.

Two sides of the pool are skirted by a flat hewn rock platform just above the water level. The other two sides of the square pool are rock wall: one with a fountain head looking over the water bowl and another simply a barrier to the above garden. The two walls are the lower edge of a lush garden, not turnip, potato, and squash, but bush, flower, and tree garden. Rarely is there any spare space wasted on beauty, but an entire section of the cloud village is garden. Is it for beauty’s sake or is there another purpose?

Following the stone trail and the quickly flowing stream up to the left, the garden reveals an unobtrusive door standing among bushes and trees just a few steps up from the pool wall. This is the only walkable entrance to the garden, with stone steps branching off the main walkway up to the door. Notice, there is no mention of anything connected to the door; it is a portal of sorts, a transition to the garden, free standing and locked for those who should not enter, not to mention guarded by a rooster that never left his post.

The main path, ascending above the garden, and around the top and back edge, provides a few glimpses into the mysterious greenery within. Just behind the door stand two very purposeful bushes, used–in other villages as well–in sacred places and obviously connoting a spiritual meaning as understandable as a foreign language: they have meaning, but we do not understand it. The mysterious village begins to provide some clues to its purpose. Do they just like the beauty of their garden? Is it just a nice place for a garden, well watered, and pleasantly decorative?

Walking on, confused by the language of the garden, we head higher, leaving little to find except the upper village gate. With the constant rain and drizzle, we took temporary shelter under the small roof of the gate. We were really just enjoying a view of the garden from the top and talking about what it said to us, when, in a change from rain to drizzle, we walked out the top end of the village and finally looked back. The entire time, we had been heading higher up and had never considered anything outside the village, though the village itself does not provide that view from within. Only on the perimeter, at gates, can those things outside the village be seen.

Stretched before us, the village fell down and out of site, following the quick falls and descent of the stream. Framed on each side by mountains, the village was only the foreground to the distant mountains, being clothed, as royalty dressed by servants, with mists, indecisive on a final wardrobe, constantly changing, revealing, and restless. As the mists moved up, down, and around the peaks, villages would appear for seconds as if to intice you to their own cloud paradise, sirens calling you to your fate.

Outside the gates, the world revealed itself. Inside, the centripetal draw led all to the garden, to the heart of the village. Inside, it is hard to know if it is revealing its heart or leading you straight to its heart without drawing back the veil. Inside there are no answers, only unanswered beauty. Passing through any of the village gates provides the full revelation of nature, but even from there, once known, the garden lures.

While on vacation, Cheri, my sister-in-law, was telling us of a mishap just before she left Waco to come to our vacation spot. She has a standing rule of not leaving on a trip with dirty dishes in the house–not a bad rule, if you ask me. Well, just before she needed to leave, she filled the washing machine, and grabbed for the soap, but there was none to be found. Thinking more of dishes than problems, she figured liquid dish soap, for handwashing, would serve well enough. It might have worked, had she not filled both holders. To cut the preliminary story short, within seconds, the washer had suds pushing out the sides. With toddler and infant ready to leave, she finally gave up and broke her rule of not leaving on a trip with dirty dishes in the house.

Well, now it is one week later, and I just happened to be with her the first time she arrived back after the dish washer incident. Visiting for a couple days, I was privaledged to witness their problem solving skills at work. As I did a few things around the house, I listened to them as they stood in front of the dish washer trying to figure a way to fix their problem. When I finally went in there, I saw them using towels to soak up as much soap as they could from the bottom of the washer, but that was not really bringing them any closer to the goal.

Then, Chad, enabled with seven years of medical education, began to think, “What kills bubbles?” He then comes up with the most hair-brained, medical\home repair I have ever heard. In his line of work, Gas-X™ is the place to turn for bubble relief. He has some in the house–my intention is not to divulge sensitive medical information, and I have permission to speak of this particular medicine, but that does not necessarily mean anybody in that household has gas–and obviously was desperate enough for a solution to the washer suds to try it out. First, he cut one of the liqui-caps and squirted Gas-X™ into the bottom of the dish washer. I was really enjoying the whole scene, talking up how improbable this theory was: I would guess it would fight completely different chemicals in the acidic stomach and with basal so. Then, with some of the Gas-X™ that had run onto his finger, he ran his finger through a cup full of suds. If you are following me at all, you will see how improbable this is, but, lo and behold!, the suds instantly reacted to the small amount on his finger.

Then, as he cut up five more liqui-caps and squirted them into the botton of the dish washer, I laughed in nervous disbelief; this seemed too comical and ridiculous to really be happening. They closed the washer and started the cycle with the most agitation. Chad and Cheri sat on the floor staring at the washer; I stood, slowly munching on animal crackers with eyes wide open. We waited for suds to start pushing out. We all said little besides, “This is too crazy to actually believe,” while fixing our eyes on the edges, but to no avail. Eventually, the cycle ended, and Chad opened the door. There were semi-clean, Gas-X™ed dishes, but not a bubble of soap to be found.

“Nobody is impressed if you know what other people know. You must dedicate yourself to knowing what nobody knows.”
    —Chad D. Strange, M.D.

Now, before the story really starts becoming another humorous China story, the laundry room alone deserves an honorable mention. I would be greatly exaggerating to simply say we have two washing machines. That alone would conjure images that do not belong anywhere near our modern washboards. These are the good old-and yes, they are supposed to be old and outdated even in China-manual washers. I know, I am not going to draw any sympathy from those of you that actually used washboards and washers with names like Beaver Creek. However, here is the process for a load of laundry: turn on the faucet to fill the tub and insert clothes, turn on the spin cycle timer, turn knob to drain tub, take out clothes and place them in the spin tub (taking up the right third of the washer), send them for a spin, then do it all again. This is no marvel of modern laundering electronics, but beats the boards.

Back to the story where I stand with a tub of submerged whites. I turn off the faucet filling the tub, and turn the timer for the rotator whopper-having inconveniently forgotten the name-and the only result is the clicking of the timer. In other words, the rotator whopper is not whopping. After a brief investigation, I realize the electricity is out-not a rare occurrence in my new town, but less frequent, I hear. As the tune “Count Your Blessings” runs through my head, I give thanks I have water, my whites are able to soak a little longer, electricity will eventually come back (at some undisclosed time), and that all I have to do is wait instead of grab the washboard.

With nothing to do now but return to my room and take care of any non-electronic business till I can finish washing clothes, I practice patience. After a short time, the electricity returned and I rushed down to the electric washboards. I gave the command and my whites were rotated and whopped while I read the news (Again, I really do feel for all who have scrubbed dirty diapers day in and day out by hand). After whopping and draining, switching to the spin was no problem.

Taking my whites out of the spin tub, I replaced them in the washing tub, and turned the faucet to begin filling for the rinse cycle. Should I let you guess what happened? Nothing. Indeed, the electricity came back just in time for the water to play hookey. I do not remember “Count Your Blessings” coming to mind this time. No big deal, I guess, but I bet Beaver Creek never stopped flowing. It is lunch time anyway, I will just leave my clothes here and finish it when I come back from lunch.

I have not figured it out, but the electricity and water often have some kind of strange relationship. Often when one stops the other is not far behind. Or maybe, if one is only out for an hour or so, the other is similarly brief. Well, today was no different: the water and electricity were in cahoots. I came back from lunch to rinse the load, but the water was still off. Still, I agree, no worries. I will just take a nap and give it a bit more time.

I have never blamed China of monotony. When I woke up from my nap, things had changed. The electricity was off. That is right, the two had decided to take off work together. Now, remember, “necessity is the mother of laundry.” The chances of finishing that load anytime soon did not look good, so I just hung them up as is. I have suffered much more than being deprived of a rinse cycle in my life; worst case scenario is that my socks will not be thoroughly rinsed.

I usually just laugh when the water or electricity turns off. Toilets always have a little extra on standby and my dorm-sized refrigerator has little more than yogurt (which is just spoiled milk anyway) and film on a normal day. However, today, I was able to draw a bit more humor out of life in China.

Since I had recently learned the word “software,” this was the perfect opportunity to practice. “Second floor,” the service lady answered to my question as she pointed to the staircase. Anders and I ascended the stairs into linguistic confusion. As we scanned the entire second floor, all that could be seen was fabric hanging from seven-foot tall racks. There were a few problems here. One, was my word for software right, because, like English, it sounds exactly like “soft clothing.” Two, what is fabric doing in the middle of the disc market? Three, is this their idea of “software.” It is soft and wearable, but not soft and wareable. Four, what are the chances of two languages having the same compound word which happens to rhyme with a separate and similar meaning? Five, am I dreaming?

No. First floor: disc market. Second floor (East): fabric market-for some unknown and probably absurd reason. After a few minutes of being shocked, we noticed a hallway hidden around the corner from the staircase…easy to miss, I might add. Of course, it was full of software, catch that…”ware.” However, if you ever need software or softwear, just call. Anders and I can hook you up with just the right place.

When the dust settled, I left the protection of the department store to investigate what had caused the commotion. Snakes…low prices at the market…aliens? I noticed about five men in dark blue police uniforms strolling the streets like it was a sunny, summer day. Either they were completely deaf and blind, or the fading stampede had not really soaked in, nor would it.

I saw them calmly confiscate two tables left behind as if it was routine trash to be cleaned off the street. I then saw the remainder of the Mob Squad: about 10 officers, some in golashes in case a stray puddle got in their way, in two mini-buses to come to make sure the streets were just as they were everyday. All of the hundreds of the people on the street, including the officers, knew that dozens of street peddlers took to the streets every day at lunch time to sell their wares. Evidently, everybody except me also knew that periodic visits from the blue-suits were simply an occupational hazard.

And I thought I left a good cattle drive behind in dusty Texas.