Houses of the holy

and an oddity of a relaxed day of little effort...coffee brought good karma, food soon will...

A day where voltaire's iris catechism has been in my mind...a monk approached, from lhasa, Tibet he said...the dalai lama is in leh...can I pat for him to get there...I thought of the poverty which surrounds, the luxury of the temples, wondered why the faithful not only accept but at points appear to cherish this...and I thought of an old woman along the way who lives in a hovel selling food to feed the holy fish to the tourists and the faithful...I caught a glimpse, darkness fallen, stark concrete, she at the door still offering wares...in the back of the room another figure older maybe, male, crouched with a tinge of broken, weary, piteous...

And were you to give? A vanity of faith it seemed, an absurdity; it made me think of voltaire...a question I still toy with...and it's that kind of place, dwelling upon abstracts...