thunderbolts, warazein and all,

I would like to acknowledge kmyaing for his elegant and simple post. There is no doubt in my mind that Leonardo Da Vinci and kmyaing have something in common.

You see when you step into the Louvre museum in Paris and shuffle past all the white marble statues of beautiful women and roman looking men in armor, place one foot after the other onto the white worn stairs and ascend to the second floor of this huge museum you come to a room where Leonardo's painting called Mona Lisa is hanging on a wall. The room is filled with a hundred people admiring Mona's simple but feverishly stimulating smile. By some magic Mona looks back at you with eyes that snatch your breath and strip away the hundreds of years since she was painted. The room feels empty except for the lips and the pupils and the smile as if for an instant she were a lover.

kmyaing makes me feel like that about Burma-Myanmar's future even though it is a very strange far away place for me. Where rivers of monks and nuns shout loving kindness through eyes that make Manchester United football fans look like children at play, kmyaing says it straight and says it right and I just wish to make that observation.

Check out Mona Lisa here:
http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/viewer/viewer.html?http:// www.brc.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~actan/gallery.htmlluxfiathttp:// www.brc.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~actan/gallery/Mona- Lisa2.jpgluxfiat1024luxfiat768