good writers remind us of good writing

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

                            --by Wendell Berry

    

    Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

    vacation with pay. Want more

    of everything ready-made. Be afraid

    to know your neighbors and to die.

    And you will have a window in your head.

    Not even your future will be a mystery

    any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

    and shut away in a little drawer.

    When they want you to buy something

    they will call you. When they want you

    to die for profit they will let you know.

 

    So, friends, every day do something

    that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

    Love the world. Work for nothing.

    Take all that you have and be poor.

    Love someone who does not deserve it.

    Denounce the government and embrace

    the flag. Hope to live in that free

    republic for which it stands.

    Give your approval to all you cannot

    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

    has not encountered he has not destroyed.

 

    Ask the questions that have no answers.

    Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

    Say that your main crop is the forest

    that you did not plant,

    that you will not live to harvest.

    Say that the leaves are harvested

    when they have rotted into the mold.

    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

 

    Put your faith in the two inches of humus

    that will build under the trees

    every thousand years.

    Listen to carrion – put your ear

    close, and hear the faint chattering

    of the songs that are to come.

    Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

    Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

    though you have considered all the facts.

    So long as women do not go cheap

    for power, please women more than men.

    Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

    a woman satisfied to bear a child?

    Will this disturb the sleep

    of a woman near to giving birth?

 

    Go with your love to the fields.

    Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

    in her lap. Swear allegiance

    to what is nighest your thoughts.

    As soon as the generals and the politicos

    can predict the motions of your mind,

    lose it. Leave it as a sign

    to mark the false trail, the way

    you didn’t go. Be like the fox

    who makes more tracks than necessary,

    some in the wrong direction.

    Practice resurrection.

 

 

(--Poem by Wendell Berry, 1934-2026)

cf. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/books/review/wendell-berry-appreciation.html

the glut of gall among the soon to fall

The irony is rich. Sexual predators and pedophiles carry leashes and court sanctioned threats to women to stay within the confines of male confining ideology and lurid control. Have kids, they say, serve meals, service your man, then keep your mouth shut — we’ll tell you your place and role and how to preserve our fantasized traditions as MAGA real men.

Today’s young American women were born into a world of unfinished feminism. We have freedoms our great-grandmothers couldn’t have imagined, but also fewer rights than we did just a handful of years ago. We live in an era not just of abortion bans, but of overt misogynists in positions of power: the gleeful woman-haters of the manosphere, the anti-feminists of the MAGA right who espouse a politics of “your body, my choice,” a president accused of sexual misconduct many times over and the men in his orbit who endorse the idea that women shouldn’t have the right to vote. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/opinion/gloria-steinem-feminism-abortion.html

 There’s no pausing perversion. They tear down what is there and replace it with their fear they will be forgotten. Destroy and construct in their own image and likeness. When done, everything looks like a smirking snear and sickly-sweet condescension of  power taken but not given. Manly manipulation reins over public construction and pubic fantasies as wealth confers power and privilege over the land and minions.

What a time!

What a galling time!

the not-knowing of it all

Maybe.

Seeing the Way is like going into a dark room with a torch; the darkness instantly departs, while the light alone remains. 

 

When the Way is attained and the truth is seen, ignorance vanishes and enlightenment abides forever.        

 

--Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Or --

Seeing the Way is a dark room

torch is the insight, which passes

leaving the dark room a comfort

of indistinguishable un-sight

allowing each its own unknownness

in encompassing 

singular affirmation

native name for this morning -- drips a lot

 a soaker this morning

loud on roof of rain-porch --

such a treat!

don’t don’t, we do we do

 Trump 

Bombs

Wedding

In Iran

That’ll

Show them

Who

We are

small painting of southpaw old-timer doc

 Nice doc says

I’ll be back to how

I should be soon

With new antibiotics

And prednisone 

In ten days

He’s left handed

Been reined in 

From private practice

To the mothership

Does things old-

 fashioned way

And inspires confidence

Shakes hand

Coming and going

news from canada

 He called me “Harry.” It was the 70s. 

We worked together, taught together

sat in pubs together --

Notified today he died 23aug26 in Alberta

"Through the too many miles and the too little smiles

I still remember you"

passing without haste or regret toward what will be

Wendell Berry, I was informed by elder Doris, died yesterday. (1934-1926) 

So much to like about him.

 The Wish to Be Generous

All that I serve will die, all my delights,

the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,

the silent lilies standing in the woods,

the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all

will burn in man's evil, or dwindle

in its own age. Let the world bring on me

the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know

my little light taken from me into the seed

of the beginning and the end, so I may bow

to mystery, and take my stand on the earth

like a tree in a field, passing without haste

or regret toward what will be, my life

a patient willing descent into the grass.

Poem: "The Wish to Be Generous," by Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems (North Point Press). 

Berry wrote this:

We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to 'win the hearts and minds of the people' by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the 'truth' of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations.... I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.[15]  ibid

wenn jeder neue tag anbricht

 My daily confusion of mind has me sitting with Ensō dog looking over at Bald Mountain this new year's day the first of September. It all changes today. 

The syncretic mystery we call variably Nature, or God, or Being, or Existence pauses as August gives way to September. Monks chant Tierce in France. Cool breeze comes up driveway. Not only is there nowhere to go there's no one to imagine going anywhere.

In the realm of True Purity, there is no such thing as “I” or “He” or “She,” nor can “friend” or “foe” be found there. 

 

But the slightest confusion of mind brings innumerable differences and complications. Peace and disorder in the world, the distinction between friend and foe in human relationships, follow upon one another as illusion begets delusion. 

 

A person of spiritual insight will immediately recognize what is wrong and before long rid themselves of such an illusion.

--Muso Kokushi (1275-1351) (dailyzen) 

 

Portrait of Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

He taught Zen to a great number of disciples (the estimated number is over 10 thousand^[1]), also leaving an enormous body of poetry and other writings.^[12] One of his best known anthologies of zen teachings is Dream Conversations (夢中問答集, Muchū Mondō-shū). Among his students are Gidō Shūshin and Zekkai Chūshin, literary figures who had a central role in the development of the Japanese Literature of the Five Mountains.^[1]

Even though none survives in its original form, Soseki's Zen gardens have proven to be one of his most lasting contributions to the country's culture and image. To Soseki, designing new gardens and altering existing ones was an integral part of the practice of Zen.^[13]

Soseki died in 1351 at the age of 77. Because he was given, both before and after death, seven different honorific names (like Musō Kokushi (夢窓国師), Shōkaku Kokushi (正覚国師), and Shinshū Kokushi (心宗国師) calling him a national teacher by as many Emperors, he is known as "the Teacher to Seven Emperors" (七朝帝師,  Nanachō Teishi).^{[1] wikipedia}

 Dogen zenji was right, life is one continuous mistake. So it is my life has been. Here, as it diminishes, mistake after mistake continues undeterred.

Ideologues with their ideologies, cruelty with its cruelties, obsession with its malignant obsessiveness -- the news of absurd human activities in never-ending trickle goes on and on.

Here in this unimportant dooryard this cloudy morning the sound of cars and trucks along barnestown road, each containing someone important doing something important, pass by out of sight up and down hill.

Birthday love for my son. A rose for his mother. The season changes.

Crow calls out from upper branches.

Sun breaks through. We live with our histories, our mistakes, our changes.

Then this song:

 I Don't Want To Talk About It (from One Night Only! Rod Stewart Live at Royal Albert Hall) 

 

I can tell by your eyes

That you've probably been crying forever

And the stars in the sky don't mean nothing

To you, they're a mirror

I don't wanna talk about it

How you broke my heart

If I stay here just a little bit longer

If I stay here, won't you listen to my heart?

Oh, my heart

If I stand all alone

Will the shadows hide the colors of my heart?

Blue for the tears, black for the night's fears

The stars in the sky don't mean nothing to you

They're just a mirror

I don't wanna talk about it

How you broke my heart

If I stay here just a little bit longer

If I stay here, won't you listen to my heart?

Oh, my heart

...   ...   ...

So gebt das Leben

So kommt jeden neuen Tag. 

So entfaltet sich das Leben

wenn jeder neue Tag anbricht.

with appreciation and gratitude

 

once born

the giving birth

sustains

the last star broken by storm

Where we’ve come from is nowhere near anything else.

Now here near nothing else.

Something has existed

Before heaven and earth;

Shapeless and silent

In its origin,

Yet the master of

Every image and form,

Can never wither

With the passing of time.

--Bankei (1622-1693)  

 

Bankei is perhaps most famous for his teaching of the Unborn (Japanese: fushō 不生). The Unborn (also fushō fumetsu 不生不滅, "unborn and undying," or "no creation and no annihilation"^[9]) derives from the Sanskrit term, anutpāda (no-birth, no-arising, not-born, non-produced, no-origin).^{[web 1][web 2]} The Indian tradition sees the term anutpāda as an aspect of the ultimate truth, emptiness; since emptiness does not arise or cease, it is not born and never dies.^[10][11] The term is also used in the Lankavatara Sutra, where it is equated with emptiness.^[12] According to D.T. Suzuki, anutpāda is not the opposite of utpāda (arising) but transcends opposites. It is the seeing into the true nature of existence,^[13] the seeing that "all objects are without self-substance."^[14] The phrase fushō fumetsu不生不滅 (unborn undying) also appears in the Heart Sūtra.^{[note 1]}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankei_Y%C5%8Dtaku

Why all the feelings of loneliness experienced in the world? 

Is it we think we are someplace else, away from some imagined place we are convinced we ought to be?

What if there is only love?

What if every place was our true home? Every person our true family? Every experience our true reality?

Richard Hugo’s poem “Villager” is one of my favorites. When you get to the final stanza, take note:

Villager

 

 

What's wrong will always be wrong.  I've seen him lean

against the house hours and glare at the sea.  His eyes say

no boat will come.  His harsh throated seemingly

good natured mother bends her back to the soil

and there at least all grows well.  When I speak with him

his eyes move away to the sea and I imagine

the red in his face from drink is also from

some ancient tribal shame. To him I'm wealthy.

When we talk I know how wealthy I am.

 

The police have him on file: petty theft.

I'm certain he steals to make up for the nothing he finds

every day in the sea, and to find money for drink.

Some days a woman picks him up, a sister I'm told,

takes him away and hours later delivers him back

passed out.  Next morning again he's propped against

the house, the tide out in his eyes.  I imagine

his sister, if that's who she is, knows oblivion

is what he must have often to survive.

 

I have much to tell him.  And nothing.  I'd start

with the sea.  I'd say, there was another sea something

like this long ago, and another me.  By the time

I got to the point he'd be looking away and be right.

No two hurts are the same, and most have compensations

too lovely to leave.  At night, a photo glows alive

inside him when his mother's asleep and the cops

aren't watching. It lights up in the dark

whenever he looks hard and by dawn has burned out.

 

I almost forget: he'd do anything for you.  Love him

for what you might have become

and love him for what you are, not that far

from him.  We are never that far.  Love

everyone you can.  The list gets longer and shorter.

We're seldom better than weather.  We're nearly as good

as a woman we met in passing once at Invergarry.

Don't be sorry, for him or for self.  Love the last star

broken by storm. And love you.  You hold it together.

 

Holding it together is the ensemble performance of non-separation. “We are never that far.”

This morning I came across The Dish from 2013 where Andrew Sullivan included this poem:

Thought Problem 

by Vijay Seshadri 

 

How strange would it be if you met yourself on the street?

How strange if you liked yourself,

took yourself in your arms, married your own self,

propagated by techniques known only to you,

and then populated the world? Replicas of you are everywhere.

Some are Arabs. Some are Jews. Some live in yurts. It is

an abomination, but better that your

sweet and scrupulously neat self

emerges at many points on the earth to watch the horned moon rise

than all those dolts out there,

turning into pillars of salt wherever we look.

If we have to have people, let them be you,

spritzing your geraniums, driving yourself to the haberdashery,

killing your supper with a blowgun.

Yes, only in the forest do you feel at peace,

up in the branches and down in the terrific gorges,

but you’ve seen through everything else.

You’ve fled in terror across the frozen lake,

you’ve found yourself in the sand, the palace,

the prison, the dockside stews;

and, long ago, on this same planet, you came home

to an empty house, poured a Scotch-and-soda,

and sat in a recliner in the unlit rumpus room,

puzzled at what became of you.

(From 3 Sections © by Vijay Seshadri)

I am left with the inquiry, its own poem, a worthy koan:

What-is

Becoming

of me