An Excerpt From Don't Die in Bed: The Brief, Intense Life of Richard Halliburton.

TAPLEE, IN THE JUNGLE

Almost losing his life, he treks across the Malay Peninsula from the Andaman Sea to what was then called the Gulf of Siam.

As the dugout moved upriver, as the river narrowed, the sky became lost under dense canopies of mangrove.  Richard swatted at mosquitoes and flies.  Crocodiles slipped silently into the water as the boat approached.  Parrots screeched somewhere in the jungle and the men heard monkeys chatter.  Fish leaped out of the water to gulp a mosquito.  Deer timidly approached the bank to drink, eyes out for crocodiles.  Elephants drank from the other bank.  Cranes and herons reeled into flight upon seeing the boat.  Orangutans peered through underbrush at the men.  The men could smell rafflesia, a parasitic flower that smells like rotting meat.

That same year, in 1922 in the familiar world, people sat outside Parisian cafés discussing James Joyce’s new book, Ulysses.  In Vatican Square the faithful gathered under the third floor window of the papal apartments to pay homage to Pius XI, the new Pope.  Reporters stood around Warren G. Harding as the President listened to the first radio in the White House.  History was still in the making.

A boa constrictor hung from a tree.  Scorpions scampered across the forest floor, passing an anteater. Upon seeing the men in the sampan, a Sumatran rhino crashed away through the undergrowth.  Chattering Gibbons clambered up trees to look at them.  On the jungle floor a cobra, hood swollen, reared to strike its venom into an unsuspecting young Gibbon.

An Excerpt From Don't Die in Bed: The Brief, Intense Life of Richard Halliburton

HALSEY’S TYPHOON

For an idea of what Halliburton and crew encountered, Halsey’s Typhoon offers an example. On December 17, 1944 Admiral William “Bull” Halsey’s Task Force 38 met a typhoon that claimed many lives and sank ships. Looking through windows of pilothouses, helmsmen saw water in the air, air in the water. They could not tell where sea ended and sky began. Piles of sea drove horizontally against wheelhouse windows. Wind roared through the rigging. Flags hauled down, only a tiny battle ensign flapped raggedly in the storm. Beaten by the typhoon, some ships were locked in irons, the vessels helpless in the eye of the storm and could not come about to a new direction. Ships could not see one another and a captain’s mind was fraught with only one idea—keep to the weather. The bows of small ships, destroyer escorts, plowed into mountains of sea that came crashing down on the wheelhouse.

On aircraft carriers, fighter planes down in the hangar bays tore free of lashings and were hurled into other planes, rupturing fuel tanks and igniting fires. The light carrier Monterey was set ablaze at 0911 with fire so intense despite seas washing over the flight deck that it spread below and she quickly lost steerage. On Monterey eighteen planes were destroyed or thrown overboard by wind. Another sixteen were almost destroyed. Her ventilation system was badly damaged.

Lieutenant Gerald Ford―one day a US President, then a young officer on Monterey―was almost swept overboard. He volunteered to lead a damage control team below. In the bowels of the ship all night, Ford and his men braved stifling smoke and intense heat to put out fires. He had been assigned as athletic officer, assistant navigator and gunnery officer and this, he might have joked years later, was not in his job description.

USS Langley rolled through seventy degrees. A plane broke loose in San Jacinto’s hangar and crashed into several other planes. On Cape Esperance the flight deck erupted in flames. In heaving seas, the damage control team risked their own lives to put it out and they did. Kwajalein rolled so far to port that when she righted, her catwalks came back washing with green water. Flat on the flight deck, crewmen crawled inch by inch to three aircraft torn loose and the men tried to push them from the flight deck before they could do more damage. The men worked and struggled against the storm, expecting any moment to be washed overboard but an hour later they had jettisoned the planes into the ocean.

Some Koans of Quantum Mechanics

After a two-week sesshin, and in deep meditation, a Zen disciple is tapped on the shoulder by a monk so the disciple can visit his Zen master about his assigned koan. He arises in the silent zendo, padding past others in lotus position, and enters a room for dokusan with his roshi. With a gassho to the Zen master, the disciple sits and waits for his teacher to speak. The roshi studies him silently. Then, rather than asking the student to show him Mu, the Roshi poses these to him, and they are all quantum puzzles:

The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled

The abbot asked, "You heard him say it?  'Pain's the only evil I know about.'  You heard that?"

The monk nodded solemnly.

"And that society is the only thing which determines an act is wrong or not? That too?"

"Yes."

"Dearest God, how did these two heresies get back into the world after all this time?"
_____________________
From  A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr

The post title is from the poem Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

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Don't Forget This

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In ancient Rome, a general, many to become emperors, presided over The Triumph (Triumphus), a victory parade through the streets of the city with throngs watching him pass by.  In a chariot he lead the parade, and heard the ovations of the masses. He wore a purple tunic, for purple was a rare dye only the nobility and powerful could afford.  Behind him walked all his army, his men and women captives, soon to become slaves, followed by his other spoils of war.  A slave held his golden crown, but the main role of the slave was to occasionally whisper in his ear,

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"There's a very large question here." (Winnie The Pooh)

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She awoke three hours later, still strapped into her seat, in the Amazon." Wearing a torn miniskirt and one sandal she walked out of the Amazon jungle alive with bad injuries and a maggot infested wound. More can be found here, here and here