Author: doodledweller
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The Horses of Saint Mark
The tales of the horses of Saint Mark are, unfortunately, naught but tales of theft and robbery. The Saint A local cobbler, Anianus, was sitting as usual by the sea when Mark approached, for his sandal straps had come loose. While Anianus was mending the sandals, the awl slipped and pierced his palm. As he…
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The Winged Horse
Among the images of Tibet that the world has come to know are the prayer flags strung along trails and peaks high in the Himalayas. They are called “rlung ta”, which means “windhorse”. Of the rlung ta composition, the windhorse is at the center, surrounded by four animals of the cardinal directions – the Garuda,…
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The Spotted Horse
From fish to cephalopods, from insects, birds, to mammals, the world of spotted species has always attracted human attention, standing out to us as beautiful and eye-catching. Paradoxically a primary reason for spotting is that it provides excellent camouflage in the wild, particularly in grasslands and forests. The spots mimic the sunlight dappling through leaves…
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Norwegian Wood
Among all of the Beatles’ ballads that I listened to in my youth, Norwegian Wood stood out for its romantic tune and peculiar title. I didn’t understand English as well then, but a read of this song’s lyrics is anything but. As the authors had clarified straightaway, it was about an affair gone awry. As…
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The Reindeer
Long before the tales of Santa Claus, images of the flying reindeer had been etched onto the Bronze Age’s stones, scattering across the deserts and steppes of western Mongolia and stretching into the Altai Mountains and up to the border of Manchuria in the east. On these stones depicted the reindeer with its antlers reaching…
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The Snow-Queen
“Except ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of God.”– Matthew 18:3 When I was a child, I knew of Finland as the garden of the Snow-Queen. In Hans Christian Andersen’s story, a little girl named Gerda rode a reindeer, passing Lapland to reach Finland in order to…
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The Birch Tree
At Loschwitz above the cityThe air is sunny and chill;The birch-trees and the pine-treesGrow thick upon the hill. Lone and tall, with silver stem,A birch-tree stands apart;The passionate wind of spring-timeStirs in its leafy heart. I lean against the birch-tree,My arms around it twine;It pulses, and leaps, and quivers,Like a human heart to mine. One…
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The Juniper Tree
I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coatsWith scarves of red tied ’round their throatsTo keep their little heads from falling in the snowAnd I turned ’round and there you goAnd Michael, you would fall and turn the white snow redAs strawberries in the summertime.– Fleet Foxes, White Winter Hymnal Since it was…
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New York
Precedingly named New Amsterdam, the city of New York was settled by Dutch traders in 1624 before being ceded to the English in 1667. After the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, it surpassed Boston as America’s business capital. By 1870, soaring real estate values in lower Manhattan pushed buildings up into the air,…
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Venice
Along the coast of northeastern Italy, where the rivers Brenta, Adige, and Po meet the Adriatic sea, lies Lido, a long sand-bank that forms a bulwark to protect the Lagoon of Venice from fierce storms sweeping often over this turbulent sea. Over thousands of years, sediment brought down from the Alps by these rivers built…
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