揚葩簌簌傍疏籬, 薄翅舒青勢欲飛。‘Ode to the Green Cicada Flower’
幾誤佳人將扇撲, 始知錯認枉心機
The flower flutters softly by the feeble hedge,My translation.
Its raw-green wings spread out, ready for flight,
The beautiful woman attempts to swat it with her fan
Before she realizes her mistake, her effort wasted.
Asiatic Day (Commelina communis, 鸭跖草).
Now (and every late summer), hundreds of these flowers spring up in wet shady places around Yuelu Mountain. The flowers only last for a day, but every day there will be new ones appearing. The flowers also have a long history of human use: they provided the blue colour in old Japanese woodblock prints and Traditional Chinese Medicine claims they have the effects of removing water, clearing away heat, cooling blood, and detoxification.
Squilla ssp.? (虾蛄属).
A mantis shrimp on Gulangyu Island, Xiamen. I thought I saw a prawn burrowing into the sand and I pulled it out with my toes for a closer look. Had I known what it was, I would have been more careful.
The Banyan King (ficus microcarpa, 细叶榕) in Fuzhou National Forest Park. Seeing it was one of the highlights of summer travels in Fujian province. This tree is said to have been planted 900 years ago in the Song Dynasty and its coronal has grown to cover over 1300 square meters. I hope it will still be there 900 years from today.
Scopimera intermedia.
Spotted on the beach by the Hulishan Cannon Fort in Xiamen. There were many small crustaceans surrying around in the evening, but this is the only one I managed to take a clear picture of, against the oncoming darkness and the camouflaging sand.
Louise Bogan
'The Dream'
O God, in the dream the terrible horse began
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.
Coward complete, I lay and wept on the ground
When some strong creature appeared, and leapt for the rein.
Another woman, as I lay half in a swound
Leapt in the air, and clutched at the leather and chain.
Give him, she said, something of yours as a charm.
Throw him, she said, some poor thing you alone claim.
No, no, I cried, he hates me; he is out for harm,
And whether I yield or not, it is all the same.
But, like a lion in a legend, when I flung the glove
Pulled from my sweating, my cold right hand;
The terrible beast, that no one may understand,
Came to my side, and put down his head in love.
Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913), p. 362:
The room for choice is so limitless that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make catalogues which shall be supposed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of the One Hundred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library. It is all right for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good books; and if he is to go off for a year or so where he cannot get many books, it is an excellent thing to choose a five-foot library of particular books which in that particular year and on that particular trip he would like to read. But there is no such thing as a hundred books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for one man at all times; and there is no such thing as a five-foot library which will satisfy the needs of even one particular man on different occasions extending over a number of years.
Tailless Lineblue (Prosotas dubiosa, 疑波灰蝶).
Another typical blue: this one was haunting the Hulishan Cannon Fort in Xiamen. This species has a wide range from all over India to Australia; and across the southern coast of China though rarely further inland.
Tiny Grass Blue (Zizula hylax, 长腹灰蝶).
A typical blue butterfly, that does not seen to come so far north as Hunan. This one we spotted in the morning in Huweishan Park in Xiamen.
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Sir Sidney Colvin, 5 vol (London: William Heinemann, 1924), V, p. 184 [‘To Edmund Grosse’, Dec. 1894]:
I do like to be deceived and to dream, but I have very little use for either watching or meditation.
Lindley's Butterflybush (Buddleja lindleyana, 醉鱼草).
A common deciduous shrub in the rocky regions of southern China. Some sources claim it flowers from June to July but on Yuelu Mountain, and in parts nearby, its white and purple flowers can also be found throughout August as well.
Samantha Harvey, Orbital (New York: Grove Press, 2023), p. 28:
Maybe one day we’ll look in the mirror and be happy with the fair-to-middling upright ape that eyes us back, and we’ll gather our breath and think: OK, we’re alone, so be it. Maybe that day is coming soon. Maybe the whole nature of things is one of precariousness, of wobbling on a pinhead of being, of decentring ourselves inch by inch as we do in life, as we come to understand that the staggering extent of our own non-extent is a tumultuous and wave-tossed offering of peace. Until then what can we do in our abandoned solitude but gaze at ourselves? Examine ourselves in endless bouts of fascinated distraction, fall in love and in hate with ourselves, make a theatre, myth and cult of ourselves. Because what else is there? To become superb in our technology, knowledge and intellect, to itch with a desire for fulfilment that we can’t quite scratch; to look to the void (which still isn’t answering) and build spaceships anyway, and make countless circlings of our lonely planet, and little excursions to our lonely moon and think thoughts like these in weightless bafflement and routine awe. To turn back to the earth, which gleams like a spotlit mirror in a pitch-dark room, and speak into the fuzz of our radios to the only life that appears to be there. Hello? Konnichiwa, ciao, zdraste, bonjour, do you read me, hello?
Bhutan Sergeant (Athyma jina, 玉杵带蛱蝶).
This is the only one I have observed on Yuelu Mountain, but there must be more out there, and throughout other Hunan forests during the summer.
Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot: A Novel (London: Viking, 2024), p. 42:
That’s the thing with children. So often what they do, or what they think they should do, or what they think they are good at is just some product of something someone told them that they would be good at. If you’re tall people say, Surely you’re magnificent at basketball. If you’re a girl shaped like a block without hips, people say swimming, boxing, the discus, and then one thinks, Am I good at these things? Surely if people say it, it must be true.
Crested Elsholtzia (Elsholtzia ciliata, 香薷).
Although I took this picture in Hengshan last October, this culinary (though I have not myself yet attempted cooking with it) plant can be found in flower in many Hunan forests in late Summer and Autumn.
Ben Jonson
'The Praises of a Country-life'
[A translation of Horace, Odes, V.2]
Happy is he, that from all Business clear,
As the old Race of Mankind were,
With his own Oxen tills his Sires left Lands,
And is not in the Usurers Bands:
Nor Soldier-like started with rough Alarms,
Nor dreads the Seas inraged harms:
But flees the Bar and Courts, with the proud bords,
And waiting Chambers of great Lords.
The Poplar tall, he then doth marrying twine
With the grown issue of the Vine;
And with his Hook lops off the fruitless Race,
And sets more happy in the Place:
Or in the bending Vale beholds a-far
The lowing Herds there grazing are:
Or the prest Honey in pure Pots doth keep
Of Earth, and shears the tender Sheep:
Or when that Autumn, through the Fields lifts round
His Head, with mellow Apples crown'd,
How plucking Pears, his own hand grafted had,
And Purple-matching Grapes, he's glad!
With which, Priapus, he may thank thy Hands,
And, Sylvane, thine that keptst his Lands!
Then now beneath some ancient Oak he may
Now in the rooted Grass him lay,
Whilst from the higher Banks do slide the Floods?
The soft Birds quarrel in the Woods,
The Fountains murmur as the Streams do creep,
And all invite to easie sleep.
Then when the thundring Jove, his Snow and Showers
Are gathering by the Wintry hours;
Or hence, or thence, he drives with many a Hound
Wild Boars into his Toils pitch'd round:
Or strains on his small Fork his subtil Nets
For th' eating Thrush, or Pit-falls sets:
And snares the fearful Hare, and new-come Crane,
And 'counts them sweet Rewards so ta'en.
Who (amongst these delights) would not forget
Loves cares so Evil, and so great?
But if, to boot with these, a chaste Wife meet
For Houshold aid, and Children sweet;
Such as the Sabines, or a Sun-burnt-blowse,
Some lusty quick Apulians Spouse,
To deck the hallow'd Harth with old Wood fir'd
Against the Husband comes home tir'd;
That penning the glad flock in Hurdles by
Their swelling Udders doth draw dry:
And from the sweet Tub Wine of this year takes,
And unbought Viands ready makes:
Not Lucrine Oysters I could then more prize,
Nor Turbot, nor bright Golden Eyes:
If with bright Floods, the Winter troubled much,
Into our Seas send any such:
Th' Ionian God-wit, nor the Ginny-hen
Could not go down my Belly then
More sweet than Olives, that new gather'd be
From fattest Branches of the Tree:
Or the Herb Sorrel, that loves Meadows still,
Or Mallows loosing Bodies ill:
Or at the Feast of Bounds, the Lamb then slain,
Or Kid forc't from the Wolf again.
Among these Cates how glad the sight doth come
Of the fed Flocks approaching home!
To view the weary Oxen draw, with bare
And fainting Necks, the turned Share!
The wealthy Houshold swarm of Bondmen met,
And 'bout the steeming Chimney set!
These thoughts when Usurer Alphius, now about
To turn more Farmer, had spoke out
'Gainst th' Ides, his Moneys he gets in with pain,
At th' Calends puts all out again.
Paddy frog (Fejervarya multistriata, 泽陆蛙). Juvenile.
In past years, I have only seen a few of these juvenile frogs by the Xiang river in Changsha, but this summer, where the water has been much high than is usually, there have been dozens of these young frogs hopping about.
καίοντο πτελέαι τε καὶ ἰτέαι ἠδὲ μυρῖκαι,Homer, Iliad, XXI.350-51. My translation.
καίετο δὲ λωτός τε ἰδὲ θρύον ἠδὲ κύπειρον
The elms and willows and tamarisks were burning,
Burning was the clover, reed and galingale.
Krananda latimarginaria (三角璃尺蛾).
A member of the Geometridae family, these moths are very common in the summer and I have observed them resting during the day, especially on various species of ferns. One can look for them wherever there are camphor trees (or perhaps other species of cinnamomum) nearby.
If people would but leave children to themselves; if teachers would cease to bully them; if parents would not insist upon directing their thoughts, and dominating their feelings—those feelings and thoughts which are a mystery to all (for how much do you and I know of each other, of our children, of our fathers, of our neighbour? and how far more beautiful and sacred are the thoughts of the poor lad or girl whom you govern likely to be, than those of the dull and world-corrupted person who rules him?)—if, I say, parents and masters would leave their children alone a little more—small harm would accrue, although a less quantity of as in praesenti might be acquired.
Society Garlic (Tulbaghia violacea, 紫娇花).
The whole plant, even the flowers, smell of garlic. It is originally from southern Africa, it can be found in both feral and cultivated parts of Yanghu wetlands.
Last Sunday we had thirty-nine folks to tea and I noticed that they were almost all ill-shaped, ugly or ill-dressed. I came into the office and complained at having to work for such people at 1s. 6d. a head. Charles Neilson said, ‘That’s easy—put up a notice, “Buy our masks at 1s. each, or pay 6d. extra.” ’ So I went in and told Phyllis to charge 6d. face-money each for the worst cases. Thus for the first time in history seven people without knowing it have left an inn having paid 6d. each for not being beautiful. Surely this was a more praiseworthy action than the usual one of charging people extra because they are beautiful, well bred and dressed?
I am very strong. Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like.
Saddlebag Glider (Tramea virginia, 华斜痣蜻).
Another Changsha dragonfly, though these skimmers are less common, at least in the lotus ponds I frequent in the summer. Named for the patch of colour on its hindwings, that the imaginative viewer might perceive as a 'saddlebag'.
Scarlet Skimmer (Crocothemis servilia, 红蜻).
The lotus ponds of August provide seemingly endless varieties of dragonflies. This colourful skimmer is in abundance all throughout all the still waters of Changsha.
Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars: a novel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024), p. 219:
School was a waste of fucking time. Literally. A factory farm for future office cows.
Crimson-tailed Marsh Hawk (Orthetrum pruinosum, 赤褐灰蜻). Female.
Summer is still providing many dragonflies. This one was resting on a reed by the edge of Xiangjia Lake. The name 'crimson-tailed' is more appropriate to the male of the species, but the female has its own vibrant orange and yellow colours.
It was good to be born rich, because if you’re rich, you have freedom. But if you can’t be born rich, then the next best thing is to be a professor.Attributed to E. Digby Baltzell
Cicero, De oratore 2.24. My translation.Mihi enim liber esse non videtur, qui non aliquando nihil agit.
For it very much seems to me that no man is free, who is not sometimes doing nothing.
Plume Poppy (Macleaya cordata, 博落回).
There was a great deal of it growing in the Huxingshan Yao Ethnic Township, often towering over two meters and full of pinkish white summer blossoms. The Chinese name refers to the sound that can be produced by blowing into the dry hollow stem something I lamentably did not have a chance to try.
Kyril Bonfiglioli, The Mortdecai Trilogy (London: Black Spring Press, 1991; 1972-1976), p. 109:
‘Goodness,’ I babbled, ‘but how awful for you. Not drinking, I mean. I mean, imagine getting up in the morning knowing that you’re not going to feel any better all day.’
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (New York: Grove Press, 1980), p. 59:
“I refuse to ‘look up.’ Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man’s fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.”
inter cuncta leges et percontabere doctos,Horace, Epistulae, I.18.96. My translation.
through all this you must read and question the wise
Psychostrophia nymphidiaria (黑边白蛱蛾).
An attractive medium-sized moth that is only found in south western China: I came across two in the Huxingshan Yao Ethnic Township, one was perched on a mound of dirt on the side of the road; the other was resting on a leaf.
Rosemary Tonks, Bedouin of the London Evening (Hexham: Blookaxe Books, 2014), p. 102 [Interview with Peter Orr; pp. 94-104]:
ORR: Have there been any writers, though, that have been a notable influence on you?
TONKS: All the great writers from Shakespeare to Chekhov, practically all French literature.
ORR: You have never found yourself writing like them and having to stop yourself consciously?
TONKS: Everybody does. The best thing about an influence is to realise it and to swallow it, and never to throw it away. It is like throwing away all the advantages of metre or rhyme, everything must be grist to your mill. You want to be on guard, but not afraid.
That he read many of the moderns is improbable, since he nowhere alludes to them. Ben Jonson, we know he reverenced, though he was never “sealed of his tribe”; William Browne and the Fletchers and other Spenserian-pastoral poets influenced him; but the literary crowd that hung round the court and stage he probably troubled little about. They went their way, and he his. Deep in the Greek and Latin, medieval and Elizabethan writers, he could spare little time, and had little taste, for the moderns.Rose Macaulay, Milton (London: Duckworth, 1934), pp. 36-37.
Before the scientific revolution the world was more like a garment men wore about them than a stage on which they moved. To such a world the convention of perspective was unnecessary. To such a world other conventions of visual reproduction, such as the nimbus and the halo, were as appropriate as to ours they are not. It was as if the observers were themselves in the picture. Compared with us, they felt themselves and the objects around them and the words that expressed those objects, immersed together in something like a clear lake of – what shall we say? – of ‘meaning,’ if you choose. It seems the most adequate word. Aquinas’s verbum intellectus was tanquam speculum, in quo res cernitur—‘like a mirror in which the object is discerned.’Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, 2nd edn (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988; 1957), pp. 94-95.
Yellow-throated Bunting (Emberiza elegans, 黄喉鹀).
Another bunting, I often saw Huxingshan Yao Ethnic Township: every evening they were singing in the trees and on the telephone wires: welcoming the setting sun.
A first in Greats left me neither a professional philosopher nor a professional historian; but it left me with a fierce love of sifting evidence and the power of not being fascinated into acquiescence when superior persons talked philosophy at me.R.A. Knox, A Spiritual Aeneid (London: Longman, Green and co., 1918). p. 63.
Meadow Bunting (Emberiza cioides, 三道眉草鹀).
I did not have much time for birding, during my time at Huxingshan Yao Ethnic Township, but in my evening walks I could not help but notice the significant numbers of daurian redstarts, and even more bunting, throughout the local farmland.
Black-crowned night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax, 夜鹭).
There are many of them now, fishing in the evening, in the lakes and the streams. This one was fishing in the lily pond at Xianjia Lake: there are many other species of bitterns, herons and egrets there too and a flock of myna which swarms into the pond every sunset.
Simon Critchley, 'Seven Adverbs That God Loveth', The Paris Review, 5 Agust 2024:
For example, I believe that Julian of Norwich had Showings, or revelations of Christ; that George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, was carried up to heaven; that William Blake was visited by Angels in his dark little dwelling off the Strand in London; that Wordsworth had a total sensuous apprehension of the divine in nature during his ascent of Mount Snowdon; and that Philip K. Dick had an intellectual intuition of the divine in February 1974. This list could be continued. In fact, it could be nicely endless.
I don’t doubt these things, at least not at first, and I sometimes wonder whether I (as someone who teaches philosophy as a day job) should always be cultivating skepticism or praising the power of critical thinking. There is a defensive myopia to the obsession with critique, a refusal to see what you can’t make sense of, blocking the view of any strange new phenomenon with a misty drizzle of passive aggressive questions. At this point in history, it is at least arguable that understanding is as important as critique, and patient, kind-hearted, sympathetic observation more helpful than endless personal opinions, as we live in a world entirely saturated by suspicion and fueled by vicious judgments of each other. I’m not arguing for dogmatism, but I sometimes wonder whether philosophy’s obsession with critique risks becoming a form of obsessional self-protection against strange and novel forms of experience. My wish is to give leeway for strange new intensities of experience with which we can push back against the pressure of reality. All the way to ecstasy.
οὐ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γε κρεῖσσον καὶ ἄρειον,Homer, Odyssey, 6.182-185. My translation.
ἢ ὅθ᾽ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον
ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή: πόλλ᾽ ἄλγεα δυσμενέεσσι,
χάρματα δ᾽ εὐμενέτῃσι, μάλιστα δέ τ᾽ ἔκλυον αὐτοί.
For indeed, nothing is nobler or better than
When a man and woman with a single heart
keep home together: bringing many griefs to their enemies
And sharing joy, which they know best of all, with their friends.
Pterodecta felderi (锚纹蛾).
Another moth, spotted in the morning in Huxingshan Yao Ethnic Township. I could have probably enjoyed the whole summer there finding new species every day. Hopefully it will not be long before I am back in west Hunan.
χρὴ δὲ πρὸς θεὸν οὐκ ἐρίζειν, ὃς ἀνέχει τοτὲ μὲν τὰ κείνων, τότ᾿ αὖθ᾿ ἑτέροις ἔδωκεν μέγα κῦδος.Pindar, Pythian Ode, II.88-89. My translation.
One must not spar with a god, who on one hand raises the fortunes of some men, and on the another gives great glory to others.
Phymatostetha dorsivitta (红背肿沫蝉).
A pair of large froghopper insects, enjoying the sap of a very ancient oak tree in the Huayao scenic area.
《小池》 楊萬里
泉眼無聲惜細流，‘Small Pond’
樹陰照水愛晴柔。
小荷才露尖尖角，
早有蜻蜓立上頭。
Springs quietly and sparingly trickle out.Translated by Qin Dachuan.
Tree shades dangle on water white and soft.
No sooner had the young lotus shot sprouts
Than the dragonflies alighted on their tops.
Eastern Azure Sapphire (Heliophorus saphir, 莎菲彩灰蝶).
A nice lycaenid butterfly, I saw many of them in Huxingshan along the sides of the roads: they are flashy blue and brown on one side and yellow with an orange fringe on the other.
Epicopeia hainesii (浅翅凤蛾).
I see many swallowtail butterflies in the summer, but a swallowtail moth is a first for me. It was conspicuously resting on a wall near a rest stop in Longhui County, which we stopped at on the way to Huxingshan for a few fleeting minutes.
Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Caligornia Press, 1971), p. 43:
“Troy” after Schliemann was no longer a dream, but a place on the map. As his discoveries persisted, more and more Homeric words came to mean something producible, something belonging to the universe of the naturalistic novelist. Each such word is salvage from the vortex of mere lexicography, where of words we learn chiefly what company they keep. When Alice in Wonderland’s father Henry George Liddell, D.D., collaborated on the Greek Lexicon in the reign of Victoria, the word euknēmides meant only “well-greaved,” which is not really English, and nothing more could be said about it except that another word Achaioi (of comparably uncertain scope) tends to draw it into the text, as “sea” draws the word they render “wine-dark,” and “Hera” draws “oxeyed.” So “oxeyed Hera,” we read in the Butcher and Lang translation, and “wine-dark sea,” and “goodly-greaved Achaeans.” But by the reign of the second Elizabeth euknēmides has acquired particularization from a painted vase, a stele, two sherds of pottery, a frieze from the megaron of Mycenae, a fresco at Pylos and an ivory relief from Delos, “all of the third late Helladic era”: whoever encounters the word in Homer today has reason to know that it designates something in particular, shin guards, of unspectacular appearance, leather perhaps, and distinctively Achaean, never Trojan; one more reality retrieved from amid a din of word.
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 2008; 1972), p. 4:
An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved – for a few moments or a few centuries. Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph. For photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record. Every time we look at a photograph, we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from an infinity of other possible sights. This is true even in the most casual family snapshot. The photographer’s way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. The painter’s way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper. Yet, although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.
Matrona basilaris (透顶单脉色蟌).
Like all broad-winged damselflies, it is a stunning insect. This species ranges all over China, though this one, spotted in a 500-year-old forest in Huxingshan Yao Township was the first I have seen in the Hunanese wild.
Stichophthalma howqua (箭环蝶).
A large butterfly, almost the size of my extended hand, I followed the movements of three of them through a bamboo forest until I was able to manage a short but closer look, as one of the three stopped for a short reprieve.
There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight.Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (New York: New Directions, 1960; 1934), p. 86.
Japanese Spirea (Spiraea japonica, 粉花绣线菊).
A familiar flower all over Hunan, but it was flowering in particular abundance during my stay on Huxingshan, wherever on the mountain it was afforded adequate light.
And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led,The Fairie Queene, I.8-10
Ioying to heare the birdes sweete harmony,
Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred,
Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky.
Much can they prayse the trees so straight and hy,
The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall,
The vine-propp Elme, the Poplar neuer dry,
The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all,
The Aspine good for staues, the Cypresse funerall.
The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours
And Poets sage, the Firre that weepeth still,
The Willow worne of forlorne Paramours,
The Eugh obedient to the benders will,
The Birch for shaftes, the Sallow for the mill,
The Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound,
The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill,
The fruitfull Oliue, and the Platane round,
The caruer Holme, the Maple seeldom inward sound.
Led with delight, they thus beguile the way,
Vntill the blustring storme is ouerblowne;
When weening to returne, whence they did stray,
They cannot finde that path, which first was showne,
But wander too and fro in wayes vnknowne,
Furthest from end then, when they neerest weene,
That makes them doubt, their wits be not their owne:
So many pathes, so many turnings seene,
That which of them to take, in diuerse doubt they been.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vitaInferno, I.1-6.
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smarrita.
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!
Halfway through our life's quest,
I found myself in a dark forest,
As the straight path was lost.
Oh how hard it is to talk of such a thing,
This forest so wild, bitter and strong
the mere thought renews the dreading.
