OH MY HECTIC SCHEDULE!

The title of this post is incorrect. What I did yesterday was wash, replace the bandages (in the process ripping out hairs), and go down to my bank. Read news. Then read about the An Lu Shan rebellion (安祿山; 安史之亂), which nearly destroyed the empire over a period of roughly than a decade. As good a reason not to trust Sogdians as any.

The tax base was destroyed, along with many useful public works, and the toll was frightful. Two thirds of the population snuffed it.

So, mostly reading. Tangential to re-reading about the T'ang Dynasty (唐朝 'tong chiu'), during which some of my favourite poetry (唐詩 'tong si') was written.
Often simply called 'regulated verse'.


TONG SI

Brief excerpt from Wikipedia, for clarification: "The representative form of poetry composed during the Tang dynasty is the shi. This contrasts to poetry composed in the earlier Han dynasty and later Song and Yuan dynasties, which are characterized by fu, ci and qu forms, respectively. However, the fu continued to be composed during the Tang dynasty, which also saw the beginnings of the rise of the ci form.

Within the shi form, there was a preference for pentasyllabic lines, which had been the dominant metre since the second century C.E., but heptasyllabic lines began to grow in popularity from the eighth century. The poems generally consisted of multiple rhyming couplets, with no definite limit on the number of lines but a definite preference for multiples of four lines."
End excerpt.


Semi-rhyme, full rhyme, non-rhyme, full rhyme.


Altogether much less tiring than public transit when you are recovering from an appendectomy, with resultant aches, pains, and tiredness. More public transit today, and tomorrow; medical appointments in different directions. And naturally more news reading, plus history and revisiting old poems. Each day is a little better, and I expect to be fully in the swing of things again by August.
Until then, I shall make the best of it all, and read a lot.


No excessive behaviours this week or next.

Ya man, there's the hect of it all.




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