#hanshans

[ma-pi-ma]

Il mio cuore è come la luna d'autunno un lago di smeraldo - puro, limpido e luminoso. Niente vi può essere paragonato; dimmi, come si può spiegare?

Hanshan, da da Montagne fredde

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Taos, NM following the season's first significant snow fall. Photo: Steve Bundy (Nov 5, 2022)  :: [Scott Horton]

HanShan Monk Flute Melody (寒山僧踪)

"The mountains are so cold not just now but every year crowded ridges breathe in snow sunless forests breathe out mist nothing grows until Grain Ears leaves fall before Autumn Begins a lost traveler here looks in vain for the sky" 

- Zen Hermit Hanshan (9th Century AD), The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain (by Red Pine, 2000), p39)

[Red Pine (translator) :: Bill Porter (author)]

[ochoislas]

VIVIENDO EN LA MONTAÑA

La nieve apesga mi cumbrera, velo; medio parece el cuerpo sin ser nada. Los años idos, no sé dónde fueran: cada vez que me vuelvo, pasó un año.

Mi cuerpo un tronco seco, cenizas las ideas; nieve cubre mi testa, escarcha mi quijada. El mundo no aborrezco porque vejez me abrume: en mis ojos no ve dónde posarse el polvo.

Cuerpo y mente rendí, gané la calma; discurre mi vejez entre mil cumbres. No dejo que la nube se hurte al valle; guardo la luna hasta cerrar mi puerta.

Frío que atere, mil cumbres nevadas; embiste de mil simas viento airado. Cuando despierto bajo la cobija, la yerma soledad no reconozco.

Los diez mil mundos son relumbros vanos; luna en el agua un solo cuerpo y mente. Cuando cesan distingos y noticias, no queda ya lugar al pensamiento.

Sin rescoldo el fogón, el lecho frío; no aroma el pebetero mi vigilia. Todo sonido abate, mente en calma: tal como si me viera en un espejo.

La nieve cubre el mundo: todo es nuevo; campo de plata inmenso me recata. Sentado ingreso en un fulgor secreto, eternamente limpio de mancilla.

Hanshan Deqing

di-versión©ochoislas

*

山居詩

雪壓衡門夜擁爐　此身雖寄恰如無 不知日月從何去　回首人間歲巳徂

形如枯木念如灰　雪滿頭顱霜滿腮 不是老來偏厭世　眼中無處著塵埃

身心放下有餘閒　垂老生涯在萬山 不許白雲輕出谷　好隨明月護柴關

寒威入骨千峰雪　怒氣衝人萬竅風 衲被蒙頭初睡醒　���知身在寂寥中

百千世界空華影　一片身心水月光 伎倆窮時消息斷　可中無處著思量

地爐無火石牀寒　瓦鼎香消坐夜殘 萬籟聲沉心更寂　却疑身在鏡中看

雪滿乾坤萬象新　白銀世界裏藏身 坐來頓入光明藏　此處從來絕點塵

憨山德清

[isekaivillainess]

[A curtain of pearls]

A curtain of pearls hangs before the hall of jade

And within is a lovely lady,

Fairer in form than the gods and immortals,

Her face like a blossom of peach or plum

Autumn winds blow from from the western lodge,

And after thirty years have passed

She will look like a piece or pressed sugar cane.

- Hanshan (Cold Mountain), 600-800.

[ailelie]

18 (a poem from Hanshan, translated by Red Pine)

I spur my horse past ruins ruins move a traveler's heart the old parapets high and low the ancient graves great and small the shuddering shadow of a tumbleweed the steady sound of evergreens but what I lament are the common bones unnamed in the records of immortals

[k-star-holic]

General Yi Sun-sin's Turtle Ship Stirs Screen in Japan

Source: k-star-holic.blogspot.com

[d-i-x-i-t]

East is just as good as west. Those who know the meaning of this; are free to go where they want.

Han-shan

[fukiana]

MASS EFFECT 1: LEGENDARY EDITION (2021) dev. Bioware Milky Way \ Horse Head Nebula \ Pax System \ Noveria \ Port Hanshan

[ma-pi-ma]

Nessuna direzione è migliore o peggiore, l’Est vale quanto l'Ovest. Coloro che ne conoscono il significato sono liberi di andare dove vogliono.

Hanshan, da Montagne fredde

[unfair-water-plane]

So one thing that has always made me chuckle in ME2 is the fact that Kal’Reegar is a marine in a Quarian suit. And he fits in with Shepard easily, the same attitude and headspace and cadence (for mShep at least). And I’m sitting here at work and the thought just hit me.

What if that’s because he is a marine in a Quarian suit?

Hear me out. Kal is older than Tali, or at least gives off those vibes, and so he would have been on his pilgrimage a while ago. Like maybe right after first contact. And here are these brand new people who came out of nowhere and had apparently enough fire power and attitude to give the Turians a very brief pause. The whole galaxy wants to know more. And humanity has no idea who is out there, but surely they can’t all be like the creepy bird people?

Cue one very curious Quarian in Shanxi, just as curious an out humanity as humanity is about everything. Meeting with early alliance brass, giving them information common palace to any kid with an extranet feed but wholly new to humanity. He explains that the Quarian don’t have ground forces because they don’t have a ground, and is honest about the geth, and is like ‘so how did you make the Turian Hierarchy freak out?’

And somehow ends up observing basic training, and falls in love with it. To the point where he actively asks to go through marine boot camp in Hanshan, and is just earnest and endearing enough to be allowed. So he goes through it, puts in the work and the blood and sweat and tears and makes the kinds of friends that you sort of have on the Flotilla, but everyone also knows you are all going to separate ships eventually and getting attached is hard.

But the humans will pack bond with a robot vacuum without issue, and when they meet a Quarian who wants to learn and thinks it’s amazing that they stood up to the biggest military in the galaxy running on old fashioned rocketry and spite? The marines adopt him as one of their own. They are brothers, something most single child Quarians have no experience with, and Kal gives it back in spades. He talks like them, fights like them, jokes and learns and is like them.

And when it is over and they graduate, it’s hard to turn down the offer to stay. But humanity respects the loyalty to his people that takes him back to the fleet, and it almost brings him to tears when his graduating class passes a cap for his passage back to the fleet in more comfort than sitting on a box in a volus cargo ship.

It actually brings him to tears when his drill instructor informs him that while it might not be in great shape, Arcturus has authorized them to gift Kal’Reegar with a battered but space worthy corsair and an official greeting from the Systems Alliance to the Migrant Fleet.

The SSV Jarhead is perhaps the best gift anyone is his age range can give to a future captain, though his practical military experience is a gift to the whole fleet. It catapults him through the Quarian military, from for soldier to instructor to commander, and somewhere he hopes that his brothers and sisters are as proud of them as he is of every transmission that makes it back to him.

On Haestrom, that training keeps him alive long enough to watch his squad die, and that cuts like nothing else. But he can’t stop, because the principle is still depending on him, and until his suit gives out he has to fight to her.

But then the voice cuts through the chatter of his own mind, and he *knows it*. Knows the cadence and the phrasing, knows how a human mouth forms the phrases that he has spent years trying to teach. Commander Shepard might not be a marine, but they are a human combat specialist and the fraternity is there.

Maybe it’s just three more people who are going to die for this fools errand, but somehow Kal doesn’t think so. There are two bone deep beliefs that he will carry it’s him to either the home world or the afterlife, and it has always felt appropriate to him that they rhyme. That they sound similar, when he breathes them into the air.

Keelah Salai. Semper Fi.

[dataheights]

Noveria: Port Hanshan

[ochoislas]

Moro a los pies de la barranca fría; de mi ermita me pasman los prodigios. Las verduras del monte traigo en cesto, en canastillo torno con las bayas. Sobre la broza, como las verduras; cárdenas setas saboreo y mastico. Tras enjuagar mi güira en agua clara cuezo las yerbas de contraria esencia. Luego, sentado al sol con mi pelliza, de los pasados leo los poemas.

Hanshan

di-versión©ochoislas

*

棲遲寒巖下   偏訝最幽奇 攜籃采山茹   挈籠摘果歸 䔫齋敷茅坐   啜啄食紫芝 清沼濯瓢缽   雜和煑稠稀 當陽擁裘坐   閑讀古人詩

寒山

[laelior]

The ride back from Rift Station is eerily silent.

Liara sits near the back, contemplating the hands folded in her lap. She’s earned the numbness that radiates from her.

Shepard might as well be a statue at the front of the tram, her back ramrod straight and her shotgun slung across her lap, one hand resting on the stock. She keeps a quiet vigil, her eyes continually scanning the track ahead of them for signs of danger. Kaidan hasn’t seen her move once since they’d boarded the tram, in a stark departure from her typical restless energy. He puts it down to deference for Liara’s grief and the unnerving encounter with the rachni.

Kaidan is somewhere in the middle, pacing from side to side while keeping an eye on both Liara and the peripheral sight lines as the tram hurtles along back toward the central station.

The tram lurches around a bend, and the statue at the front of the tram winces. It's subtle, as is the way she shifts her left shoulder. Someone else might not have caught it. But Kaidan does.

He sighs and makes his way to the front of the tram to kneel down in front of her, looking her over critically for the source of her wince.

“Alright, show me where it is,” he says, quietly so as not to disturb Liara.

“Where what is?” She barely looks at him, eyes flicking down to him before resuming their scan of the horizon ahead.

“Whatever injury you’re trying to power through. Let me take a look at it."

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Go check on T’soni, she could probably use it.” She waves her hand, shoeing him away like she would a fly, but Kaidan is having none of it.  Not today. Not after all they’ve been through.

“Liara’s in shock. She needs time to process what happened, not a medi-gel patch. Now quit being stubborn and show me.” He stares her down, unwilling to concede this battle of wills to her and her mulish pride. Before she can protest, he takes the shotgun from her lap and places it on the floor–easily within reach for someone with a normal range of motion. Her nostrils flare in annoyance but she finally meets his gaze.

“For fuck’s sake, Alenko,” she snaps quietly. She moves her left arm away from her side and Kaidan sucks in a breath. There, the plates of her Onyx armor have blackened and cracked, leaving a fist-sized dent right over her ribs.

Carefully, he picks at a piece of ablative ceramic and it flakes away in his hand like so much tissue. The undersuit is tattered, showing the bruised expanses of her skin underneath and two bony knobs sitting close to the surface. “How…?

“One of the commandos. Hit me with a warp and shotgun blast right after.” Her accompanying shrug is not effortless. “Maybe shorted out the medi-gel delivery system, too,” she concedes with a quiet grunt.

He pulls a spare medi-gel pack from his own armor and breaks it open, gingerly applying the clear, viscous substance directly to her skin. His field medic training had never specifically advised this particular method of applying medi-gel, but there had been a number of edge cases that training had failed to cover. She hisses when he presses just a little too hard.

“Sorry,” he murmurs reflexively. He peels off his gauntlet for a gentler touch and sets it next to her shotgun. The medi-gel is cold on his fingers, a sharp contrast to the heat of her skin under his touch.

“These look broken, Shepard.” He hovers two fingers just over her fifth and sixth ribs, careful not to touch.

“I’ve had worse.” It takes all of Kaidan’s self-control not to grind his forehead into his palm.

“The moment we get back to Port Hanshan, you’re going to see Chakwas,” he says flatly. It is not a request. 

“Are you giving me orders now, Lieutenant?” There’s a cold edge to her voice and a look of hard steel in her eyes. Another time, that would have made him back off. But now…now, he meets her hard stare with one of his own.

“I don’t have to. Chakwas can still countermand you on medical matters.” She glares down at him, using that look he’s seen a hundred times now to bend others to her will. But he refuses to break under the weight of it.

And then she does the last thing he expects.

One side of her mouth turns up in a dry, lopsided smile.

Kaidan quickly drops his eyes, feeling a flush start to creep up his neck, and finishes applying the medi-gel. He fumbles to get his armored glove back on once he’s done. He resumes his place in the middle of the tram, but somehow he just knows she’s still smiling that little smile of hers.

When the tram finally slows to a stop at the central station, he’s still not sure who won that round.

[smalllady]

Places in Mass Effect - Noveria Noveria is a small, frozen terrestrial world, barely inhabitable by conventional definitions. It is privately chartered by the Noveria Development Corporation, who lease out labs to perform research too dangerous or controversial to be performed elsewhere. Given Noveria's unique situation, it is the source of many wild conspiracy theories. Colony Founded: 2163 Population: 361,400 Capital: Port Hanshan Orbital Distance: 0.9 AU Orbital Period: 0.9 Earth Years Radius: 5656 km Day Length: 52.0 Earth Hours Atmospheric Pressure: 0.87 Earth Atmospheres Surface Temperature: -1 Celsius Surface Gravity: 0.81 G

[swaps55]

Please tell me something about that Noveria First Kiss AU! <3

You may not like it, which is why it has remained a WIP. I toyed with making something happen with everyone having a night off at Port Hanshan, but what came out was some drunk teasing that escalated much faster than anyone (even me) guessed. Sam reacts badly when he doesn't have time to chew on his feelings first, and when he's up against a wall he lashes out. And, uh. His choice of targets was not ideal.

I didn't know how to fix the spot I got them into, or how the fuck to get the actual kiss out of it, so I haven't returned to it. Part of me wants to, just to explore it, because it feels in character enough to be worth poking at. But with Fugue and Mezzo being such angst fests, I haven't had the mental fortitude to give to it.

~

“You’re jealous,” Ashley informs him.

“Of what,” Shepard scoffs, giving her the same look he gave the NCD inspector who grounded the Mako.

“That woman is hitting on him, and you can hardly keep your butt in that chair.” She bops the leg of his seat with a foot. His eyes narrow.  

Garrus swivels his head between them, mandibles flaring, and Tali sets her cards down. Joker sits back in his seat and crosses his arm, like there’s a show about to happen and he’s got a front row seat. Wrex shoves another glass of ryncol towards her, and like an idiot, she takes it.

“He hates being hit on,” Shepard informs her.

“Yeah,” she says with a snort, “because it’s never you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

Amazing how much nuance in the human – alien – whatever – voice gets lost when you’re drunk, or maybe she would have noticed how flat Shepard’s sounded, or how little humor was in it.

She grins. “It means he’s wanted in your pants since probably five minutes after he met you, and somehow you haven’t noticed.”

“I notice plenty,” Shepard says, leveling her with a stare. “We’re close. Why does everyone assume it has to be about sex?”

[more stuff]

“Leave it alone, Williams,” Shepard growls. “We are what we are. Stop trying to make it something it’s not.”

“Tell him that,” Ashley says, gesturing towards Alenko, who is now glancing over his shoulder while he waits for their drinks. “I have never seen someone so desperate over someone as that guy. Pretty sure if the two of you just got a room and fucked each other’s brains out you’d both be a lot better off.”

Shepard shoves out of his chair with enough force Ashley actually jumps. Just as she starts wondering if maybe she pushed him too far, Alenko chooses that moment to return with his drink. Garrus swivels his head between them, mandibles flaring, and Tali sets her cards down. Joker sits back in his seat and crosses his arm, like there’s a show about to happen and he’s got a front row seat.

“What’s going on?” Alenko asks, cautious.

Shepard meets his gaze like a rail gun lining up a target.

“So, what, you want to fuck me?” he demands, eyes flashing, and Ashley sucks in a breath. “Is that what we’ve always been about? Is getting in my pants what friendship is to you? Because if it is, fine. I’ll go fuck you in that corner right now if that’s the price of doing business.”

Alenko stares at him in incomprehension that erodes into something Ashley can’t even name, before it fades completely and all that’s left is a slate so blank it hits harder than any bullet she’s ever fired.

“Go fuck yourself,” he says, quiet, indifferent, as he sets his drink steadily on the table and walks out of the bar while everyone at the poker table stares after him.

He’s only made it a few steps before Shepard’s expression to shift to shock, then horror, but it’s too late.

[metmuseum]

Dish with Buddhist Monk-Poet Hanshan. mid-17th century. Credit line: Seymour Fund, 2011 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/76734