New camera

Not wanting to be tempted by additional lenses, nor wanting to lug around a "serious" camera, but wishing to explore beyond what my Casio Exilim EX-S10 can do, I bought a Canon G11. It's compact enough to carry most days, but heavy and bristling with manual features. Fortunately there is "auto" mode, so let's begin there. I've not given up on the EX-S10 which is always with me and I'll learn more by working with both.

As an aside, for those who doubt climate change, look at the church emerging from the lake. Of course, it could be chance, but why not err on the side of caution.

Shimmering heat

I passed late afternoon trucks lined up by the roadside - diesels rumbling, slowly turning loads of concrete waiting to be pumped to the next floor to set overnight. They build here as fast as the concrete allows, a new floor every week. Walking through the heat from the trucks set me thinking about whether energy costs are factored into construction (and, for that matter, demolition), or whether they are just a cost to society. Viable condominiums are sold en bloc and demolished top-down only for new construction to arise the moment the site is cleared. Ten years here is old, twenty is ancient.  Build, destroy, consume — it all seems hard and alien. Concrete production is energy intensive too: calcining limestone releases carbon dioxide, quite apart from that released by the fuel for the kilns. Then we air-condition the resulting stone boxes, and so it goes on.

Wikipedia, perhaps not always the most reliable of sources, says "as of 2006, about 7.5 cubic kilometres of concrete are made each year—more than one cubic metre for every person on Earth" and that "the cement industry is one of two primary producers of carbon dioxide (CO2), creating up to 5 percent of worldwide emissions of this gas. The embodied carbon dioxide (ECO2) of a tonne of concrete varies with mix design and is in the range of: 75–176 kg CO2/tonne". (ref.)

Walking through the shimmering heat, there was no arguing with this. It may already be too late.

Miroku bosatsu

 

Miroku　弥勒 (Sanskrit, Maitreya) is the future Buddha, alternatively depicted as a bodhisattva (bosatsu 菩薩) as in the famous example above from Kōryū-ji [広隆寺] in Kyōto. More to come.
 
This image is from a beautiful small book, "Handbook of Korean Art - Buddhist Sculpture" by Youngsook Pak & Roderick Whitfiel, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2003.

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In memoriam

 

Frédéric Chopin was born on March 1st, 200 years ago.

Returning from London last week, I picked up "Chopin's Funeral" by Benita Eisler in the British Library bookshop (thanks dear H!). Now listening to Marc-André Hamelin playing the Opus 27 Nocturnes.

Chopin died from TB on 17th October 1849 in Paris. He was 39.