It is almost three weeks since I left for China. I’d say, ‘since I’ve been in China’, but it took two weeks to get here. You see, for two weeks, I was in a never-never-land called Hong Kong. And China and Hong Kong, I have learned and been told, are two entirely different worlds.

There is no way, given the travel exhaustion that now lives and breathes where my mind used to be, that I can write so well or clearly as to tell what I have seen, experienced, smelled, tasted, breathed, consumed, excreted, swallowed, coughed, inhaled and drunk… but I can show you, until my words come back to me.

So, the next four, five, six, eight, ten or twelve blogs will be just that – pictures that tell the story, with brief explanations where they are easy for me and helpful for the reader…Pictures, Pictures, Pictures…

Traffic Non-Stop:

Non-Stop

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Movement, Lights, 24 hours:

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Always a Crowd:

Always.

Everywhere,

Everywhere

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Thirty Years Old, this remarkable animal in my hands…

(photo credit – Helen Kreisler¹)

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And quite miserably alive.

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Night Game, Southern Playground:

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Wan Chai Restaurant Closes:

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But the Night is Young (for $30 dollars)

(Mama-san, Wan Chai, Hong Kong Island)

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Pictures tell lots.

But what can I say in a mouthful? What comes to mind in describing this world?

There is a theory that I enjoy (and spiritually subscribe to), that names our world, galaxy, universe and very existence, not as a unique event (mechanistically explicable and never repeated), but as existing in one bubble in a foam of similar bubbles. This is the ‘Multiverse’ theory.

Here, our universe becomes not unique in existence, but only in arrangement. What is the center of life in our world becomes peripheral in another incarnation, and what is a poison here may become the center of life in this new world.

So we may imagine a world built not of oxygen and carbon, but of mercury and helium – and what a strange world it would be (to us). And on and on, in revision, inversion and combination.

(There is nothing new under the sun, except in arrangement, said the philosopher).

This is the modern astronomer’s shortcut for what the Hindus have always known, (though they use a different calculus, to be sure):

• We are the dream of the godhead, who reclines on the cosmic ocean, and though we are a dream of another, we are also dreamers in the dream…

And in the infinity of cosmic oceans, lie an infinity of godheads, who are all dreaming a universe. And so on, until the dreamer awakens, and the world is extinguished. But the day turns, Vishnu again reclines, Brahma emerges on the lotus, and the dream is made anew.

All of this is only to say – this is no metaphor. This is the way things are. And if you don’t believe me, if you don’t believe that the world is a splinter of infinity, at ease with its constant reinvention and recapitulation of energy and form….well, I’d say, come to Hong Kong, and then go anywhere else, and tell me that it isn’t so.

Ancient Howl:

Ancient Tupperware:

Modern Art:

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The Marketplace is Alive with Color:

Green,

Red,

White,

Gray,

Silver and Gold,

And Green, Again.

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The Gods Mock Us,

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Bring Down the Rain on Us,

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Play with Us, Like Pets,

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And Eat Us For Dinner…

Heart, Lungs, and All.

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But We Find Comfort in Simple Pleasures…

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Through the Restless Night.

Hong Kong. I’ll be back with more, as internetting allows…

See more at Best of Hong Kong at liamsphoto.

¹ All photos are by me unless otherwise noted, or by Helen Kreisler