R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 88

Morning in Seal Beach: Inspiration

Morning in Seal Beach. Flight = inspiration. Riding the wave = writing the poem. 

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Chekhov & Levitan

 In Chekhov's "Three Years," the character Yulia stops in front of this landscape ("Quiet Abode") by Isaac Levitan.

https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine....

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Chekhov's Letters (12.09.1890)

   We passed Japan because the cholera was there, and so I have not bought you anything Japanese, and the five hundred you gave me for your purchases I have spent on my own needs, for which you have, by law, the right to send me to a settlement in Siberia. The first foreign port we reached was Hong Kong. It is an exquisite bay. The traffic on the sea was such as I had never seen before even in pictures; excellent roads, trams, a railway to the mountains, a museum, botanical gardens; wherever you look you see the tenderest solicitude on the part of the English for the men in their service; there is even a club for the sailors. I went about in a jinrickshaw--that is, carried by men--bought all sorts of rubbish of the Chinese, and was moved to indignation at hearing my Russian fellow-travellers abuse the English for exploiting the natives. I thought: Yes, the English exploit the Chinese, the Sepoys, the Hindoos, but they do give them roads, aqueducts, museums, Christianity, and what do you give them?

Chekhov's Letters (6.29.1890)

Written from a boat on the Amur River.

*

Meteors are flying in my cabin--these are luminous beetles that look like electric sparks. Wild goats swim across the Amur in the day-time. The flies here are huge. I am sharing my cabin with a Chinaman--Son-Luli--who is constantly telling me how in China for the merest trifle it is "off with his head." Last night he got drunk with opium, and was talking in his sleep all night and preventing me from sleeping. On the 27th I walked about the Chinese town Aigun. Little by little I seem gradually to be stepping into a fantastic world. The steamer rocks, it is hard to write. To-morrow I shall reach Habarovsk. The Chinaman began to sing from music written on his fan.

Young Chekhov by Isaac Levitan

 A young Chekhov (by Isaac Levitan). Writer & Painter were childhood friends and shared similar destinies. Both died young. (Levitan declined to travel to Sakhalin with Chekhov.)

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Morning in Seal Beach

 Morning in Seal Beach. Gangstas. The Pier. Walking.

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From Chekhov's Letters (5.28.1890)

 ... I shall be in Irkutsk in five or six days, shall spend as many days there, then drive on to Sryetensk--and that will be the end of my journey on land. For more than a fortnight I have been driving without a break, I think about nothing else, I live for nothing else; every morning I see the sunrise from beginning to end. I've grown so used to it that it seems as though all my life I had been driving and struggling with the muddy roads. When it does not rain, and there are no pits of mud on the road, one feels queer and even a little bored. And how filthy I am, what a rapscallion I look! What a state my luckless clothes are in! 

Long Beach: Jetty

Long Beach. Jetty. Fishing. Sunday morning (coming down). Walking.

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Long Beach: Redondo & PCH

Long Beach: Redondo & PCH. Birds & Bikes. Walking.

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Long Beach: Urban Cowboy

 Long Beach: Urban Cowboy. Redondo & PCH. Walking.

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