应如是住，如是降伏其心

如何才能安住？无所住既是住。
心如明镜 没有主观没有成见物来则应
人似秋鸿来有信 事如春梦了无痕

I discovered this book on my flight to Iowa. The purpose of my trip was to learn more about agriculture and the automatic farming technology applied in the farms.

How suiting yet how ironic that I found this article on organic and manual farming of peaches by an owner of a small family owned farm in California.

I grimaced at the word peaches. I could count the number of peaches I ate in California in the last 10 years by one hand.
I didn’t like peaches in California, not even the ones from farmer’s market. They were all together way to meaty for me.
They were all flesh with no juice.

Back in China, eating peaches goes hand in hand with having juices run down the wrist and possibly staining the shirts if one is not carefully leaning forward slightly.

Comparing the flavors of peaches in California with peaches in china is like comparing a hamburger to a steak.

On of top of that, every peach I ate tasted the same.
We are being fed with generic food like these chickens in cages.

When the author painted a vivid picture of his peach eating experience, I was in shock of how much it reminded me of these of my own memories.

I was in awe that there were farmers like the author’s family that were still trying to grow peaches with, oh my lord, real flavors and, gasp, real juices.

It lured me in and I felt compelled to read on….

I enjoyed his writing although it was, sometimes, a little too up tight and too logical for me.

But I loved how he described the details with such beautiful languages.

I loved how he rarely used metaphors but completely replied on accurate and beautiful languages to communicate emotions.

I had a helpless admiration towards smart and witty writing styles.
But this was a change for me.
The language was well grounded. It showed confident of the writer and his immense passions for his farm, his peaches and his family.

The in flight magazine only quoted part of his book.
I came back to LA and ordered the book from Amazon.
It arrived yesterday. I can’t wait to read it.

Wisdom of the Last Farmer by David Mas Masumoto

Japanese immigrants have a different style for expressing pain.
They write about memories with utmost accuracies and details.

Chinese immigrants express pain with bold strokes. Pain and suffer are amplified, even celebrated and treasured as legacies. Chinese immigrants see pain as a necessary passage leading to wisdom and maturity. Even happiness must thrive from pain. Otherwise, it is not complete or valued.

Pain, loses, as well as pleasure in Japanese immigrants’ writings are expressed by descriptions of common even insignificant events such as tracing tracks on a field, or devouring of a peach by a toothless grandmother.

They fill it with such details that there are hardly any direct use of emotional words.

But they are, nevertheless, moving to the readers. They awoke a forgotten part of me. The part that holds high regards for the soil that produces what allowed the humans to flourish on this planet as well as for the farmers that work so hard on them.

斜阳外，归鸦万点。。。

幸得飞飞同志友情赞助，我终于看到了周汝昌的千秋一寸心。
我最近越来越喜欢看充满个人观点的书。诗词鉴赏本来就是很私人的事情，甚至历史事件都是充满个人观点的。以前真是比较up-tight。非要追究出来一个千古定论。谁知道，世上的事就是这样无可无不可的。

看到斜阳外，归鸦万点，真的要拍案叫绝。前阵子画水彩。我喜欢湿画。看起来透明干净。可是湿画的时候，很难添层次。很容易溶成一团，变成满本子乌云了。要画得简单又传神。这个真的好费脑袋和眼神儿。

所以，当我看到归鸦万点四个字就禁不住拍案叫绝了。这就是简单传神的经典范例啊！万点和鸦。有形态有颜色。再加上归字，就成就了千古名句。四个字，一个没浪费。
特别一个归字，以前看过用寒鸦的，就没这种震撼的感觉。有了归字，除了原本的简单传神之外，倦鸟归巢天涯倦客故园望断的种种情绪也全都渲染出来了。叹为观止叹为观止。