The images that rotate in the screen behind my icons on my computer’s Desktop are of a trip that I took in the last month of visiting China where I saw a bunch of Tibetan language on signage, together with HanZi script, the panel-language of “Chinese” if you will. The place names and titles of shops or road sign images of these pictographic communication tool are still clear to me as names that speak in their image based representations.

Jiu Jiu Xiang La Huo Guo – Can’t type, natively, in Chinese here, in this program, so I’ll keep it in English. I was writing the name of a restaurant. Hot pot styled place. Images can be provided…

So, I’m working on a new book, by typing here, today. . . Perhaps this will help me remember to finish it. We will consider this a typing practice. The images change underneath again. . . The image is one taken from a cafe. I was watching a police van drive by with retractable grate over the window pane. Like on a hydraulic arm, it was standing. It was part of a caravan of them. There were at least three vehicles there.

The next picture also has place names and titles, but this time with phone numbers as well. Of the six signs that I can see in this image, four have phone numbers in clear view in block letters for legibility. Otherwise, artistic license is fluid. Differing fonts. . . Photo changes. To an orange painting of a mountain and river view with a circular motif, followed by the cursive Tibetan name for the place, followed by the Chinese HanZi that otherwise signifies the place. First, obviously, was the logo, as it was easily scalable and yet, distinctive in use and style. Then, the Tibetan script is written in the same orange with black outline. But the Hanzi is in white. . . Picture changes. . . Street with no signage other than Tibetan language, visible. There are two. One tall, maroon and golden yellow, as the had/robes are, eh? The other is encased in a logo that extends two long horns of the yak, the tribal beef and milk-giver of the plains that this land is well known for. . . It was in these halls of street, where I saw tall stacks of large buckets of yak butter. The same way we might buy paint from a big-box hardware store, yak butter was stored. Though for full disclosure, I should talk about the size. So, the reference of a 5-gallon bucket is excessive for imaginative purposes, like a 3-gallon, but the same width, just noticeably shorter.

Next image is of a man, driving a three wheeled utility truck with the kind of flat-bed that you might expect a pickup truck to have. He’s riding beside a well-made stone barrier of a road-side wall that divides the roadway to what looks like another lane or a walkway resides.

Noticing another set of roads in an image. Noticing that color choice used in much more than the larger proportion of the signage. . . But also, it is seen the paint on the side of the buildings. It is a common color, but distinctive. Most certainly, it is modeled after the robes of the monks.

The image changes. . . Seven policemen are standing outside an art shop where they are taking special interest in a very large and long piece of wall-art that clearly was somewhat wrapped for transit. Not knowing one way or the other if it was on its way in or out, I watched with an observer’s curiosity and watched for a little while and took a few pictures. They seemed cordial the whole time that I was there. They had arrived in another mini-van, one that was not battle-hardened, but looked innocuous enough for a trip to a soccer game if not for the paint-job and setting. . .

Picture has changed again. It is a large building that has the five rings of the Olympiad emblazoned on the front. Again, the building has Tibetan script over the Chinese HanZi, which, similar to the restaurants, is larger than the Tibetan script. Hmmm. Next photo is of a fruit shop. There are crates of different fruits. 28 organized spaces that I can count, as they are in a grid, four-wide by seven-deep. Peaches, watermelons, and perhaps pears are in the first row.

Picture changes. . . Another street-view, but this one is on a specially designed and strong walkway on the other side of what could amount to a moat if given enough rain for a while. The walkway is on the inside of the monastery perimeter’s outer rings. A variety of shops lined the parallel, facing town. One, I remember for being where I got some of the most pleasant and enjoyable incense stick collections I’ve ever witnessed. I could go back to this place in good conscience and buy large volumes of textiles and incense for export. Indeed. Some of their patterns were absolutely exquisite. The density of diversity, together with the quality eclecticism of the designs never ceased to amaze me. There’s another picture around the set, I’m sure, that shows inside one of the shops that are big enough for four to six or eight people at a maximum, but the bolts of cloth would number near a hundred or more. (108, generally, give or take a few. . . )

Hmmm. Quickly, I see an image of a map, pasted on a wall for travelers to have an idea where to find certain highlights of the town, wink away to a picture of a silver Volkswagen sedan with a “Kobe Bryant / 24 Forever Love” sticker prominently displayed on the rear of the driver’s side, printed over the rear wheel well. . . and the picture changes again. It’s another of a mid-street, town view, but this one seems situated so that the mountain that rises at the horizon, over the town, no more than two and a half miles seems to be positioned perfectly to give a visual centered background for the long arm of six cameras that are trained on different directions from the over-road view. The elbow of the post that held them had even more. . . but the image has fazed into the next image.

This is another, perhaps the same, image I mentioned earlier that had the group of police outside the art shop. I can describe the road, as I look at it. The town’s buildings range from three to five stories, at the tallest. Most are three or four. The road is broad and straight and leads to the mountain that stands behind it, that seems so close that you could try to count the trees, but the number would be daunting. . . The images are certainly rotating in a way that shows me what I’ve seen and described before. But as the SWAT Team’s van arrived, I didn’t mention before, the members of the team got out and walked around for a little while. Standing outside the window of the cafe I was sitting in, a young cadet stood, peeking in on me. I got a couple good pictures of him too. . .

Picture changes. . . This one, bikes are center-field. Even before, this was the one with the phone numbers. . . This time, I see a different center than the signage. The bikes out front are so cool. I have a whole collection of images of bikes that I loved seeing there. Wow. I hope I make a small section so that the set can be appreciated. The emblem for the police has five stars, one larger than the other four, over an image of the ancient guard-posts of what we would call “The Great Wall of China”, and this image is held by leaves in a crown-shape. . . and the image changes

Street-view, the one with the cameras on the arm, hanging over the road… Also has a set of four more about half way up the post, on the way to the knuckle. Yea. I got that wrong before. I remember the image was changing. I didn’t remember the exact location. No biggy. But I can see that this is the intersection of the cafe I was sitting in at some point, looking out at the police as they drove by. . . There are so many other people milling about though. . . Next image, same street, but has an SF Delivery guy, putting around in a three-wheeled mini-transport vehicle that covers the terrain well. There are two green taxis going up the lane, a line of motorcycles and mopeds are parked on the left, and cars, parallel parked on the right side, going up. . . This town has the look and feel of an old town in American Westerns. . . Same vibe, but modern and with fewer pistolas, but with the language on high, I looked up at the names of the places and I saw way more Tibetan than Spanish, when I walk in the USA!

A fresh image shows a maroon building, jutting into the sky with yellow letters as its distinguisher, and up, rises a Gulug flagpole. Gulug is my spelling of the sect that the yellow-hat Buddhists are of. The Gulug flagpole would be distinctive to anyone who has seen “Tibetan Buddhist Prayer Flags” as a things. They are seemingly wrapped like a Maypole would be in American tradition, with a wrapped image. . .

Next image, under the restaurant sign is an amazing carving! Ah, then the image changes. . . It is the shot that shows me three police vehicles. Including the one that I described as simpler, but also, with two, larger, about the size of a shuttle-bus sized rig that a hotel near an airport might use.

Picture changes again. More about the carvings below the signage. . . The patterns are patterned in wood, as shutters to the glass panes that are inside, no doubt, more visible from the inside. I thought I’d be redundant twice so that it was more effective and had a greater impact.

New picture shows the image of a special 100th anniversary of the party image.

Next is the river, rocky and obviously dredged into straight and regulated widths and depths, in a way that shows, clearly, the tread-lines of the heavy machinery that made for such straight lines in the completely plant-free stone and sandy dirt riverside.

The picture changes and shows the inside of the guest-hotel where I stayed. As much a statehouse as this town offers outside the monastery, itself. Truly ornate and classically decorated, complete with large furniture and columns with inlay and colors that pamper the eyes, with their contrasts and designs ranging from dragons to mountain side hikes.

The image changed again. . . I will change the set. . . This has been “Town Wander” in “Labrang”.

I choose “2pm, Day One” from the Labrang set.

Immediately, the image is different. It’s a hillside that I was told is a space that is sacred for its use to give final sendoffs to bodily spirits, as it functions as a spiritually certified place to burn one’s recent-lost.

The next image is a beautiful small stage, outside, with a strong and heavy roof that is open to the yard that stretches in front of it. Clearly, it is a well-used place. The density of eclectic arts in the stage area blew my mind.

I was told that a Panchen Lama was visiting soon and that the work that I witnessed was in preparation of that visit. There were people on the roof, putting stones down and wood carvers at the yard’s gate, carving a brand new richly dense entryway. The picture has changed again.

This one is two men, standing, wearing robes of the monk. One has a freshly shaved head, the other, a full head of short black hair. Both with their backs to me, they are looking up the lane, where there are temple buildings in the background, off to where they are looking, arranged under the mountain sides that face the space. . . The next image is one of the archways that are actively being created. The wood is crisply fresh, no paints, stains, or weather apparent, as if it had been shaved and carved in the recent days. There is a ladder crossing the middle of the walkway as a clear indicator of active work. No workmen are visible in the image. The stone walls stand flat and unadorned until nearly two meters in the air where reds begin above the raw cement. . and the image changes again. It is of a stone on a path I took into the hills with the well-known phrase and prayer of “Om mani padmi hum”. The phrase is ubiquitous. It is written in the script that would be associated with ancient Sanskrit, Devanagari, also the written script in use for modern Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and other spoken languages. It is likely recognizable to anyone who has a passing awareness of the culture in discussion. To find it painted in yellow on this rock on this hike that day was a great way to interact with it.

“The six syllables represent the purification of the six perfections or realms of existence. Each are considered a noble quality of an enlightened being.

Om  – Generosity

Ma  – Ethics

Ni  – Patience

Pad  – Diligence

Me  – Renunciation

Mum  –  Wisdom

…by practicing a path that unites method and wisdom, you can transform your impure body, speech, and mind into the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha.”

• The short section in quotes above, was, may I say, penned by Google’s integrated AI machine learning tool, when I put the prayer’s name into the search box and asked it for the meaning, among other things.
• Also, it give what it calls a literal meaning: Praise to the jewel in the lotus, hail!

Next picture. A better image of the wall-art. White circles in a black band, bordered with white lines, as a border to red paint that remains the most common color palate in the nation.

New image – Okay, this was amazing. . . Wax sculptures are the closest analogue, but rather, butter! These sculptures were made of colored butter from the Yaks. And wow… The rooms that these lived in smelled ridiculously sweet, and were beautiful temples to color, to gods, to artistry, to the bold statement that represents the temporariness of all the things. Next image is of a door lock. The first of many to cross the path of this photo-set, no doubt. . . I had a thing for them as a theme, after seeing so many that were particularly on theme.

Clearly, I’ve found a method of getting descriptions out. Please let me know what you think of my upswing, getting out of writer’s block this year.