It's odd. As though some news is coming. The near obsessive checking to find out. What did Volcker say? What did Soros say? And Krugman? Has the car driven off the cliff into economic ravine? Is there a spinning tire amid broken glass?

Poem

This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes with out guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forge the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.
(Poem by Donald Justice)

I don't think the end is near. Nor do I think that prayer has any place in economics. God is in the desolation of numbers to add up to anything. We'd forgotten. We believed the pastors and priests when they said, Be good and everything will work out!

Mary Oliver wrote "You do not have to be good." I'll go with the poet. It's all a silly charade -- this foppery and finagling -- pretending that it's the Democrat's fault, it's the Republican's fault. They're both bankrupt.

Who the Meek Are Not

Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent
under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep
in the rice paddy muck,
nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles
make the wheat fall in waves
they don't get to eat. My friend the Franciscan
nun says we misread
that word 'meek' in the Bible verse that blesses them.
To understand the meek
(she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop
in a meadow, who —
at his master's voice — seizes up to a stunned
but instant halt.
So with the strain of holding that great power
in check, the muscles
along the arched neck keep eddying,
and only the velvet ears
prick forward, awaiting the next order.
(Poem by Mary Karr)

I love being sick. It suspends everything. You fall into God. You fall into the fallen crumbs of your life. You don't care that water seeps down the new wall in the kitchen the recently exited guy put up but left leaving up the exterior scaffolding causing catch of snow-melt and ice and shove it under new roof and into room.

Aspirin and Umcka -- that herbal balm -- combine to ease the death that comes with every breath.

The next order?

Steady, boy! Good boy! That's a fine lad!

Justice is right. It doesn't matter what I think.

Dog and cat go out through barn at 4:15am. Log comes in from barn. Wood stove shows orange through front windows.

Right Thinking:
"And what, monks, is Right Thought? The thought of renunciation, the thought of non-ill-will, the thought of harmlessness. This, monks is called Right Thought."
--Mahasatipatthana Sutta: The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, in Thus Have I Heard: The Long Discourses of the Buddha, trans. by Maurice Walshe

From time to time everything leaves. I look around; nothing there. I slowly come to see that whatever I want turns out to be bits of charcoal and ash. Is it possible not to want?

At the Fishhouses
by Elizabeth Bishop

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals. . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
(--Poem: "At the Fishhouses," by Elizabeth Bishop from Complete Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

There's something quietly comforting about the myth of history. It is a pattern of thought outlining a beginning, a middle, and an end. We say, "I've only just begun." Or, "We're right in the middle of it." Then, "I'm coming to the end." It situates us on rulers. Carpenters and politicians fight for the same inch.

Even Buddhists turn our thoughts to impermanence. If things don't last, they must have begun and soon come to an end, right?

"Non-ill-will" sounds like a good name for an inn. Respite care. Final days of tired life.

Head-shaking disgust at fatuous comments by professional ill-willers.

Rather the narrow window of early pre-dawn silence. Men mending their nets. Wharves where going out and coming in is a ritual of tide -- a different way of wandering through history without measuring progress nor suggesting eternal recurrence. A walking stick named 'just this step, just this step.' We have never been here before. We only arrive now.

On frozen pond last night truck plows snow going from edge of land over ice to fish-house, lights fire inside, goes off to town. Fish in February come to hole in his absence to warm themselves.

When things feel like there's nothing here but holes in ice and open spaces side by side in repaired nets, then there's only what some call 'looking' -- just the gaze at end of silence.

Seeing what is. What is there. What is not.

Seal watching.

Thoughts of renunciation. Of harmlessness.

World without end.

Amen.

One thing about illness -- everything takes second fiddle to it.

Tossing and Turning

by John Updike

The spirit has infinite facets, but the body

confiningly few sides.

   There is the left,

the right, the back, the belly, and tempting

in-betweens, northeasts and northwests,

that tip the heart and soon pinch circulation

in one or another arm.

   Yet we turn each time

with fresh hope, believing that sleep

will visit us here, descending like an angel

down the angle our flesh's sextant sets,

tilted toward that unreachable star

hung in the night between our eyebrows, whence

dreams and good luck flow.

   Uncross

your ankles. Unclench your philosophy.

This bed was invented by others; know we go

to sleep less to rest than to participate

in the twists of another world.

This churning is our journey.

   It ends,

can only end, around a corner

we do not know

we are turning.

(Poem "Tossing and Turning" by John Updike, from Collected Poems 1953-1993.  Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.)

Walking snowy ice pond in stiff wind.

Turning back to coldest gust.

I don't even play fiddle.

Note: Rounding out the week, the bookshop/bakery will be closed Friday. We hope to be back Saturday.

Snow plow plows construction container.

Turning the wheel of the Dharma
is the beginning and end
of the whole training.
With this aspiration one starts
giving one's whole heart to the training;
with one's heart in it, one does it.
Depending on it, one looks
for the wonder arousing,
mysterious state behind appearances.
That attained, the transformation
of one's life has been completed.
- Torei (1721-1792)

Pizza. Tow truck. Nice visit.

Note: The Bookshop/Bakery is closed today due to (being under) the weather.

Below zero frozen air sparkling on snow, trees, and roadside brush as we drove Fort Kent to Caribou with early sun gloriously arraying everything with cold loveliness.

Based on Shakyamuni Buddha’s experience and the experience of the buddhas of the past, the main point of Dogen Zenji’s teaching is that zazen is just to become present in the process of zazen itself; this is shikantaza. It is not something you acquire after you have done zazen. It is not a concept of the process; it is to focus on the process itself. It is very difficult to understand this because even though we are always in the process, we don’t focus on it. There are even many schools in Buddhism that still handle Buddhism as a concept. But real Buddhism is to focus completely on the process itself. The process is you.
(--from, To Live is just to Live, by Dainin Katagiri)

Shikantaza is just sitting. Just sitting is being with everything.

Being with is our true nature.

There is no getting away from what we are with.

Note: Away doing other work along the roof of Maine, the bookshop and bakery will be closed Tue and Wed. Will reopen Thursday.

...........

Somewhere in mind.

The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength The awareness that there is nothing to fear shows that somewhere in your mind, though not necessarily in a place you recognize as yet, you have remembered God, and let His strength take the place of your weakness. The instant you are willing to do this there is indeed nothing to fear.
(from Lesson 48, A COURSE IN MIRACLES)

We remember.

Where we are.

Where are we?

Practice and simplicity.

Gifts of Dogen and Francis.

We reconsider return.

Hermits to hermitage.

We walk bridge from Fort Kent to Clair over St John River.

And back.

Ninety six nautical miles from Bar Harbor USA to Yarmouth NS.

Who wants to retreat to a house by the sea with a wharf near a fisheries plant rife with fishing boats?

Rain clears from the distant peaks
Dew glistens frostily.
Moonlight glazes the front of
My ivied hut among the pines.
How can I tell you how I am,
Right now?
A swollen brook gushes in the valley
Darkened by clouds.
- Daito (1282-1334

Truth often tells what we're not, what is false.

Everything collapses into itself sooner or later.

Something to look forward to.

He practices online dating. Once he proposed on one knee to a lovely lassy from across the sea. The world has changed. More and more pixils. Fewer glances. There are further contacts coming across his email. Not much, come to think, changes.

There's no self and no person,
How then kinfolk and stranger!
I beg you, cease going
From lecture to lecture;
It's better to seek truth directly.
The nature of Diamond Wisdom
Excludes even a speck of dust.
From "Thus we have heard,"
To "This I believe,"
All's but an array
Of unreal names.
(- Layman P'ang)

Maybe Valentines Day is really about Reese's chocolate peanut butter hearts and M&M's of many colors. What's love got to do with it? I listened to a man's saga. That's my practice. It's not much, really. It's just time and attention. Soon I'll run out of both. That too is a devoutly to be wished acceptance.

The Good Man

The good man.
He is still enhancer, renouncer.
In the time of detachment,
in the time of the vivid heather and affectionate evil,
in the time of oral
grave grave legalities of hate - all real
walks our prime registered reproach and seal.
Our successful moral.
The good man.

Watches our bogus roses, our rank wreath, our
love's unreliable cement, the gray
jubilees of our demondom.
Coherent
Counsel! Good man.
Require of us our terribly excluded blue.
Constrain, repair a ripped, revolted land.
Put hand in hand land over.
Reprove
the abler droughts and manias of the day
and a felicity entreat.
Love.
Complete
your pledges, reinforce your aides, renew
stance, testament.
(Poem, The Good Man, by Gwendolyn Brook

We still look here and there for what is next to show its face. Canada? Camden?

Long ago when the World-Honored One was at Mount Grdhrakuta to give a talk, he held up a flower before the assemblage. At this all remained silent. The Venerable Kasho alone broke into a smile. The World-Honored One said, 'I have the all-pervading True Dharma, incomparable Nirvana, exquisite teaching of formless form. It does not rely on letters and is transmitted outside scriptures. I now hand it to Maha Kasho.'
(--'Sakyamuni Holds Up a Flower', 6th Koan of the Mumonkan

Pizza cooks. Woman rests. Dog curls downstairs by wood stove. Sam played harmonica earlier. Silvia stopped to say she's holding a good thought for the next step of meetingbrook. Billy told Jayen at lecture last night he too would help us disengage from here. These six weeks as work came to end in kitchen at Ragged Mtn, this studio above shop has been home. Like Old Orchard, Camp Ellis, Rye Beach, and Santa Cruz before -- the familiar scent of ocean and sound of silence has nourished.

Tokusan once called on Ryutan to ask for instruction and stayed until night fell. Ryutan said, 'It is getting late; you had better leave.' At last Tokusan said good-bye, lifted up the door curtain, and went out. Noticing that it was dark, he turned back and said, 'It is dark outside.' Ryutan thereupon lit a candle and handed it to him. Tokusan was about to take it when Ryutan blew it out. At this Tokusan was all of a sudden enlightened. He made a bow. Ryutan asked, 'What realization do you have?' Tokusan replied, 'From now on I will not doubt the sayings of any of the great Zen Masters in the world.'

The next day Ryutan mounted the rostrum and declared, 'Among the monks here there is a fellow whose fangs are like swords, and whose mouth is like a bowl of blood. You may strike him with a stick but he will not turn his head. Some day in the future, he will establish his way on a steep and lofty peak.'

Tokusan then took out his notes and commentaries on the Diamond Sutra and in front of the monastery hall he held up a burning torch and said, 'Even though one masters various profound philosophies, it is like placing a single strand of hair in the great sky; even if one gains all the essential knowledge in the world, it is like throwing a drop of water into a deep ravine.' Taking up his notes and commentaries, he burned them all. Then he left with gratitude.
(--Shibayama 2000, p.201, In the 28th koan entitled 'Well-Known Ryutan.')

It has been dark a while.

So many tides come and gone.

So many lines tied and thrown off.

Joseph Goldstein told the story of Mother Teresa when asked about her praying said she doesn't say anything, she listens to God. "And God?, she was asked, "What does God say?" She said, "God says nothing, he also listens."

Listening is the Ur-Wort -- the original word.

The original word is the field of awakening allowing what is being readied for saying to find its sound in unhurried genesis.

All we can do is listen for the sound of what is being said.

And when it is, to receive it, as if everything -- everything -- depended on the sound's origination for the very continuation of creation, the very isness of existence.

The pizza is cut.

Wind sails the harbor.

Leaving with gratitude.

Republicans, oddly, begin to call themselves 'Taliban.'

Lose an election, then choose a metaphor that ensures disdain. A curious course of action.

Our Work in the World
Some people think that they will practice the dharma once they have finished with their worldly business. This is a mistaken attitude because our work in the world never finishes. Work is like a ripple of water continually moving on the surface of the ocean. It is very difficult to break free from our occupations in order to practice dharma. The busy work with which we fill our lives is only completed at the time of our death.
(--Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Meaningful to Behold)

It has been a good week for conversations in prison. Conversation with others, no matter how different opinions might be, is a sign of respect and responsibility transcending usual conditional mind meting out human judgment.

It is hard to understand the lack of respect and responsibility shown by a failing political party moribund and miserly toward the real physical and spiritual needs of citizens in the United States.

Absurd. But exhausting.

The stake driven into the back of a once vital land by unmindful and myopic ideologues has settled mortally close to a compromised faint heart of a bewildered staggering people. It is a sorry story of desperation -- some say, macabre insanity, to murder what you claim to love in the name of a love that feels nothing but depraved and numbing belief in one's own disconnective perfection.

We know God when we don't know.

But serve, with humility and simplicity, one another in real and present ways free from generality, duplicity, or self-serving reference.

May God protect us from men who refuse what God is (ever becoming) in the midst of this world!

Be caring.

Love to be unknown.

Particular and attentive.

To each.

Within.

All.

Without exception.

We are earth.

From time to time something extraordinary is realized: we are earth, earth become aware of itself.

With the groundbreaking synthesis of the German idealists Schelling and Hegel, no longer did humanity need to be seen as being adrift in a state of sin and suffering, as the Church claimed, having “fallen” away from the presence of God in the primordial past. Nor did God have to remain merely a mythic remnant of a more ignorant age, as many scientists continued to insist. Instead, the reality of the Divine could now be understood to reside most fully in our collective future—to be revealed in the world, with increasing depth and clarity, as history marched forward and consciousness evolved. “God does not remain petrified and dead,” said Hegel. “The very stones cry out and raise themselves to Spirit.”

Echoing that sentiment almost two centuries later, the American integral philosopher Ken Wilber wrote, “Both humans and rocks are equally Spirit, but only humans can consciously realize that fact, and between the rock and the human lies evolution.”
(from, A Brief History of Evolutionary Spirituality, by Tom Huston, in What is Enlightenment magazine, https://www.courses.maine.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_22106_1%26url%3d)

Becoming aware.

Moment by moment. Stone by tree. By light. Within.

Are we what is extraordinary realizing something ordinary? 

It doesn't matter.

Dreaming, Chuang Tzu became a butterfly;
Waking, the butterfly became a man.
Who knows which is real?
Who know where endless changes end?
The waters of the deepest sea
Return to the smallest stream.
The melon-grower outside the city gate
Was once the King of the Hill.
Even rank and riches eventually disappear.
You know, and still you toil
- Li T’ai-po (701-?)

Not really.

Seven men attend a meetingbrook conversation at the prison in Bucks Harbor in Down-East Maine this morning. From Eckhart Tolle to A-Rod's steroids, poems by Robert Bly and David Ignatow, and various asides -- the nine of us took turns speaking and listening to each other. It's unusual, Tony said, to have such a conversation in prison.

It's a small thing, but a seldom thing, to court real conversation.

Enlightenment as Beginningness

Most people think of enlightenment as a kind of magical attainment, a state of being close to perfection. At this level, one can perform amazing feats, see past and future lives of others, and tune in to the inner workings of the universe. This may be possible for a number of special beings, but for most of us enlightenment is much more in line with what Suzuki Roshi describes. It means having a quality of "beginningness," a fresh, simple, unsophisticated view of things. To have "beginner's mind" in how we approach things is a major teaching. In many ways, the process of enlightenment is clearing away the thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that cloud our ability to see things as they really are in their pristine form.
(--David A. Cooper, Silence, Simplicity and Solitude)

War casualties:
Iraq numbers: US forces -- 31,010 wounded; 4234 dead.
Afghanistan number: US forces -- 648 dead.

These are sad numbers.

Kaddish

Mother of my birth, for how long were we together
in your love and my adoration of your self?
For the shadow of a moment as I breathed your pain
and you breathed my suffering, as we knew
of shadows in lit rooms that would swallow the light.

Your face beneath the oxygen tent was alive
but your eyes were closed. Your breathing was hoarse
but your sleep was with death. I was alone with you
as it was when I was young but only alone now
and now with you. I was to be alone forever
as I was learning, watching you become alone.

Earth is your mother as you were mine, my earth,
my sustenance, my comfort and my strength
and now without you I turn to your mother
and seek from her that I may meet you again
in rock and stone: whisper to the stone,
I love you; whisper to the rock, I found you;
whisper to earth, Mother, I have found my mother
and I am safe and always have been.
(~Poem, Kaddish, by David Ignatow, from New and Collected Poems 1970-1985)

A day will come when I will fall down. Dizziness will overwhelm. I will think, "Oh! This is death!" And no more get up. My brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan show me the way.

When My Dead Father Called

Last night I dreamt my father called to us.
He was stuck somewhere. It took us
A long time to dress, I don't know why.
The night was snowy; there were long black roads.

Finally we reached the little town, Bellingham.
There he stood, by a streetlamp in cold wind,
Snow blowing along the sidewalk. I noticed
The uneven sort of shoes that men wore

In the early Forties. And overalls. He was smoking.
Why did it take us so long to get going? Perhaps
He left us somewhere once, or did I simply
Forget he was alone in winter in some town?
(Poem: “When My Dead Father Called,” by Robert Bly, from Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poem, Harper Collins).

Last night along tidal river in Machias, we walked dismantled train bed as full moon came through Pine trees. Cold wind braced. Rokpa scuttled over icy remnants of last high tide down embankment. A quiet, near wordless, wander.

I don't know how to pray words now that a non-dual and eternally-now sense of God takes root.

White circle ascends sky with prayerful acknowledgment of those dead in war, those frightened in life, and those who wonder about all of it.

Indulgences are not germane. Guarantees about forgiving sins are a less interesting pronouncement by the RC church. I'd prefer loud and inconsolable wailing over the absurdity of human thought and behavior concerning something like war.

I'll start. This. Now. Here.

Quietly.

For all my brothers and sisters hurt and dead.

A prayer.

A conversation with wordless grief.

Zazen is orange sun dripping from sitting in sea beyond Curtis Island.

Under the thin smoke of winter
The old temple is quiet.
After sundown,
All the visitors are gone.
On the west wind, three,
Four chimes the evening bell.
How can the old monk
Concentrate on zazen?
- Ma Chih-yuan (1260-1334

To Calais and Machias as sun goes about chores. To DownEast Correctional Facility tomorrow morning for meetingbrook conversation with inmates.

If you have the desire, do you also have the will? That's what O'a asked yesterday as we sat with Tommy in studio above shop. Is a market face of the hermitage still willing to be unveiled?

With enough pause to not appear facile -- 'Yes!'

Like the sun, we'll attempt to rise through the see to the vision that connects seer with what is seen.

I've long loved what-is, seen and unseen.

Presence is no corrective lens.

It is inner vision and outer sight.

With no separation.  

Captain Sullenberger landed his plane in the river three weeks ago. No one died. He doesn't smile when he tells the story on 60 Minutes. Nothing goofy. He just answers questions.

I came late to the dharma,
But each day, deepen my retreat.
Waiting for mountain monks,
I sweep my simple hut.
Then down from cloudy peaks
You come through knee-deep weeds.
We kneel on tatami, munching pine nuts.
We burn incense and study the Way.
Light the lamp at twilight;
A simple chime begins the night.
In every solitude, deep joy:
This life abides.
How can you think of returning?
A lifetime is empty like the Void.
- Wang Wei

Sullenberger did a good job. He flew safely. It was a good landing -- as river landings go.

Peculiar.

It could start a trend.

Green lobster boat, alongside, loans bilge pump to white lobster boat tied opposite on float.

Pure and fresh are the flowers with dew
Clear and bright is the singing of the birds;
Clouds are calm, waters are blue.
Who has written the True Word of no letters?
Lofty are the mountains, green are the trees,
Deep are the valleys, lucid are the streams;
The wind is soft, the moon is serene.
Calmly I read the True Word of no letters.
- Zenkei Shibayama

Tides run higher and lower than usual.

Will we continue to want a public face?

Consider this: there's no higher power or realm of spiritual helpers or anything other than something simpler to consider. And what's that?

Gathering simples, going home
White clouds flying
Mists melt black mountains
And this wandering mystic's
Wandered astray.
Black apes call and green birds cry
A magic crane goes before me,
Dancing, leads me
To my cave.
- Yun-K'an Tzu

Consider that our parents used to think someone else was in charge: church, job boss, government, the 'system.' And we -- what do we think?

We've come to understand that no one is in charge.

It's just us. If there's something to do, we have to do it.

With a kicker. We have to do it -- but without knowing what we have to do.

So, we just do it; we do the next thing to be done.

What makes us different from our parents? Not much. Just a small thing.

We are no longer afraid of the church, the boss, the government, or the system. Nope, no fear of any of them.

We now know it's us.

To fear ourselves.

Or love ourselves.

With a kicker. They're both the same thing.

How 'bout that?

Can't think of anything other.

Nothing seems to work. Not anything. Not me. Not any of it. Just sounds in the night.

Water clunks in abandoned lock under window. Phantom boats sidle through narrow rust-eaten doors rising and falling in nether time moving to slippery memory where long gone slips of marina backed up to Bayview street.

Across room, spirits of Findley's are noisier than usual at sink and counter visiting at edge of subtle world. It's the still hour. Everything is in itself. At edge of each other. Dimensions within and surrounding, intersecting and imagining no barriers, no difference. One world of earth concealing and unconcealing truth and untruth. Heidegger's ghost carries the origin of the work of art. Goes forward. Then reverses.

Night Rain

For no reason it rains,
Whispers of reality.
How lovely it sings,
Drop by drop.
Sitting and lying I listen
With emptied mind.
I don't need ears,
I don't need rain.
- Chin'gak (1178-1234)

I've become my own specter. I haunt the places I dwell. This respite from the never-ending finishing of kitchen out at the hermitage threatens to become permanent retreat with wandering memory. I ask fellow students: Where did we come from? What story do we settle on? Back before any knowing, where and who were we?

"Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you. The one no one talks of speaks the secret sound to himself, and he is the one who has made it all."
— Kabir

What is useful? So much of the useless abounds. Governing people in a time of political simony is useless. Usury becomes the national and international anthem. Wave that flagging misfortune! March on!  

What, then, shall we do? Tolstoy's ghost looks out window at Man-forgotten family losing home and hearth. Man has forgotten God. Man has forgotten Being. Moving from myth to decimal point, we have forgotten what it once meant to be alive.  Forgive all debts? Did Jesus say that? Or some revolutionary rising up from an immigrant refugee obscurity? People with guns will come to take you away from your bed and your breakfast unless you pay for them. Not only is there no free ride, we've made God into a financier, extracting interest and penalties on simple needs unmet.

In the night, desolate and dispirited, shells of former human beings crack open and fall to ground. Nor does the ground stop the falling. There is only the falling through. When shall we wake?

"The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away."
— Kabir (The Kabir book: Forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir)

That's all we need, an ecstatic seer-poet!

That is, on second glance, all we need.

A seeing that surrounds itself.

With love!

Anyone?

There?