Burma, America, The World, Art, Literature, Political Economy through the eyes of a Permanent Exile. "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. Sometimes we must interfere. . . There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention . . . writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the left and by the right." Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Speech, 1986, Oslo. This entire site copyright Kyi May Kaung unless indicated otherwise.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 29, 2013
Sunday, April 28, 2013
From Victor Hugo's preface to his novel - Les Miserables - 1862 -
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social
condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates
hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human
fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of
man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of
childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in
certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and
from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery
remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.
The black bird metaphor in Salman Rushdie's Memoir, Joseph Anton -
The bird metaphor in Salman Rushdie's memoir, Joseph Anton, blackbirds, the black wings of death - Hitchcock's The Birds.
Copyright Kyi May Kaung
Copyright Kyi May Kaung
Saturday, April 27, 2013
At last I found my poem - At the Races in Havana - by Kyi May Kaung
At last I have found my poem that fits these trishaw pictures - of thin people peddling fat people -
At the Races in Havana
By Kyi May Kaung
Three times out of four
we marched
so as to appear active
not inactive our heels
ground down --
at the fair grounds
passing by the stables
a horse still there
smelling of horse shit --
The aging teacher flirting
with her young student
all night --
The leaders exhorting exhorting
no bigger than chilli flakes
in the distance
whisked in
in their black
Mercedes Benz.
We turned around and left
our sons in green longyis.
I've been there at the gate
when they suddenly closed the grate
and four soldiers stood guard
facing out.
We exhausted from
our march drinking
over-sweet coffee in
the coffee shop.
Did you see that?
My friend said
she and I between us
300 lbs -- The trishaw
peddler thin peddling
furiously
uphill -- Lucky we got out when
we did --
did you see that?
And inside the speechifying
and the slogans
long live the revolution
long live the revolution
little slips of paper
passed out 5 minutes
before --
We avoid each others' eyes
as we mumble
muddled and cowed.
Copyright Kyi May Kaung
from
Pelted with Petals: The Burmese Poems,
Intertext, Anchorage, AK, 1996.
At the Races in Havana
By Kyi May Kaung
Three times out of four
we marched
so as to appear active
not inactive our heels
ground down --
at the fair grounds
passing by the stables
a horse still there
smelling of horse shit --
The aging teacher flirting
with her young student
all night --
The leaders exhorting exhorting
no bigger than chilli flakes
in the distance
whisked in
in their black
Mercedes Benz.
We turned around and left
our sons in green longyis.
I've been there at the gate
when they suddenly closed the grate
and four soldiers stood guard
facing out.
We exhausted from
our march drinking
over-sweet coffee in
the coffee shop.
Did you see that?
My friend said
she and I between us
300 lbs -- The trishaw
peddler thin peddling
furiously
uphill -- Lucky we got out when
we did --
did you see that?
And inside the speechifying
and the slogans
long live the revolution
long live the revolution
little slips of paper
passed out 5 minutes
before --
We avoid each others' eyes
as we mumble
muddled and cowed.
Copyright Kyi May Kaung
from
Pelted with Petals: The Burmese Poems,
Intertext, Anchorage, AK, 1996.
Friday, April 26, 2013
How to buy a painting - by Kyi May Kaung -
Buy paintings that you fall in love with and want to look at every day - they will last longer than a lover or a spouse.
Kyi May Kaung
Kyi May Kaung
Comments on my painting Little Bikkhuni - from my Facebook page -
- It's beautiful!
- Khinmg Soe ကိုုလိုုနီေခတ္က အရွင္အာဒိစၥ၀ံသ ( ဦးေသဌိလရဲ့ ဆရာ) ဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုုင္ငံမွာ ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္ေနတဲ့ ဘိကၡဳနီသာသနာကိုု ျပန္လည္ထြန္းကားေအာင္ ႀကိဳးစားခဲ့ဖူးပါတယ္။ ဗုုဒၶဘာသာကိုု အေနာက္နုုိင္ငံေရာက္ေအာင္ လုုပ္ဖိုု ့ သံဃာေတာ္မ်ား အဂၤလိပ္စာသင္သင့္ေၾကာင္း ေရးသားတိုုက္တ...See More
- Kyi May Kaung I painted from the photo of the real bikkhuni (Daw Thissawadi?) who was arrested for being ordained in Sri Lanka, but it does not look like her - none of the paintings I do from photos look like the people in the photo, sometimes they don't recognize themselves. Sometimes they seem to look like someone else. Sometimes they change gender. The correct term is bikkhuni (which is already female - grammar) as opposed to bikkhu (male) - See KMS above used bikkhuni, not bikkhuni ma, which is redundant, like saying table mesa (table table) or bento box(box box) - My friend who lived in Japan thought it hilarious when I ordered a bento box at Teaism - Thank you for all your likes and comments - I will send them to the current owner of the painting, who will be happy as it will increase the value of this painting.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Total hits on this blog have passed the 190,000 mark -
Total hits on my blog have passed the 190,000 mark
http://kyimaykaung.blogspot.com/
Yesterday was a new peak of 727 visits - most are from the USA and Western countries, with the least number, or almost the lease number, from Burma.
Most people are interested in visiting Burma - though blogs about Michael Jackson's son Prince Jackson, or about Kanlaon's visit to Venice, also get a lot of hits.
A blog about the Shan State Army and another about Dr. Maung Zarni's resignation from a university have stayed on the "bestselling" posts for weeks or months.
Photo and painting "Lady Vanda" copyright Kyi May Kaung.
Yesterday was a new peak of 727 visits - most are from the USA and Western countries, with the least number, or almost the lease number, from Burma.
Most people are interested in visiting Burma - though blogs about Michael Jackson's son Prince Jackson, or about Kanlaon's visit to Venice, also get a lot of hits.
A blog about the Shan State Army and another about Dr. Maung Zarni's resignation from a university have stayed on the "bestselling" posts for weeks or months.
Photo and painting "Lady Vanda" copyright Kyi May Kaung.
A sad day for Burma - from Anna Roberts at Burma Campaign UK -
|
Continuation of Musharraf and dictators, from my Facebook page -
- KMK-- Never pretend, and if you are a dictator, don't fool yourself you are loved - I wonder why he went back to Pakistan - amazing.
- Dana Tusaw He probably tempting fate, hoping that he could salvage what's left of his power and perhaps rise again like the Phoenix.
- Kyi May Kaung Amazing - as one of charges against him was complicity in the death of Benazir Bhutto, and only he knows what he did/commanded. Strange he would go back where Benazir's widower is in power, when FBI? had already said it was an accident caused by the door hatch of the SUV
- Dana Tusaw Musharraf's an interesting figure like many other dictators around the world who have fallen off the power pedestal one by one. In a way, I wonder if the countries they ruled were not better with them in charge, as terrible as they were. Now these countries are in such chaos.
- Kyi May Kaung Ah - that's what they want to "prove" -- that people can't rule themselves - But since dictatorships are like pressure cookers, all held together by the top, then when it blows, it blows - you would not say "it was better" under Stalin if your parents were sent to the concentration camps and you/we were never born - No one can say it is "better" in N. Korea as opposed to S. Korea. Democracy just seems chaotic, that's all. But better chaos than the quiet of the grave.
Monday, April 22, 2013
On so-called reforms - continuation - comment by K.M. Kaung -
They need to change the system - not pretend to change the system - the army needs to return to the barracks - Now they foment "ethnic strife" so that the thankless people will know what anarchy is and be begging for the army to restore order. Their 2008 "Nargis constitution" clearly specifies they can step in in an emergency.
Follow up comments on so-called reforms by Anonymous - from my Facebook page -
- Poe Lah Hsa I like your statement and it is true therefore I want to share it to my facebook friends...
- Peter Popham Ok, so if they don't start by stabilising the currency, releasing political prisoners, removing intrusive surveillance, freeing up the media and opening the door to non-Chinese foreign investment that will bring jobs for educated and uneducated alike - where should they start? I'm dying to know!
- Dana Tusaw Peter, a proper start would be to clean up the rotted foundation properly first before building new structures on top of it. Now we're about to compound old flaws with new ones in this crazy rush. This is not good for Burma. The government's actions so far, including the ones you mentioned, are gestures, let's realize, and ones which they can afford to manage or reverse if they wish at any time. It's not much of a concession or change.
- Kyi May Kaung It's a good start - but needs A LOT of follow through - remember, I did not write the original comment, Anonymous did.
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