noise and smoke, Goethe said, obscuring heavenly light...

"I am here for you."

Or is it "with you?"

This is a realization and a koan worth contemplating.

...Is what names are.

dust cloth

Sunlight on green leaves in afternoon breeze!

Woman leaves St Vincent's medal in cabin. It hangs from window.

In prison this morning we read from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance":

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

Afterwards we read a few poems by Naneo Sakaki (1923-2008)

This one for example:

In The Next Life I Will Be

Wiping the windowpanes of my humble shack,
a dirty dust cloth in my hand,
endless blue sky over my head.

At the forest edge
where narcissus are already in all their glory,
where wild boars bite off various trees' roots every so often,
where I stand, piss, and murmur.

In the next life I will be a dust cloth
lapis lazuli colored.

As a dust cloth, making myself dirty
I clean up windowpanes, kitchens and toilets,
and I also wipe out discrimination and wars.

If ever the world really exists
I start polishing it from my tiny corner.
If ever eternity really exists
I make it brilliant at every moment.

The more I work, the more I become
pure lapis lazuli color
just like today's sky.

Ten days after winter solstice
the mother sun is shining bright.

All of a sudden, a gust of north wind
blows the dead leaves from the trees.

Look, something coming down!
With our luminous star behind
red wings flutter.

What is that? Hawk? Flying goblin? UFO?
Wow! On the palm of my hand
I catch the monster -
a withered red leaf of oak.

Living in the flower garden of the sun's red corona
biting off the rainbow's roots forever
someone murmurs

In the next life I will be....
Jan 2, 1998/ Izu Peninsula, Japan
Nanao Sakaki

Deano thought that if everything is itself, then the dead will also share in awakening whenever anyone awakens. The movement, he thought, is the movement of what we call God between us.

The substance abuse counselor joined the conversation at end and dropped a novelty pile of dogshit next to his chair with which he got my attention and silent pledge of payback.

Rokie, of course, was not fooled.

Some sorrows...

Like bird, dead on stone outside door, somber beginning to morning.

Our cats are indoor cats.

Something else must be looked at.

Adios, compañero!

dear friend

It is all story.

And when a part of story ends, it is best to let it go.

Once.

A time.

Upon. . .

Is gone.

The 15th of August

A world of subjects. Of intimacy; no secrets.

Taken up.

Found ground.

Where is the separation in wholeness?

Who is identified as included or not included?

MU!

Everything, heaven and earth, not two not one.

temporary consideration; at this point

Eric Holder and the Justice Department are talking about drug-related prison sentencing reform. Say "Good!" quickly. Then consider the long sorrow.

I think of all the poor saps behind bars for insignificant drug infractions, then I think of all the criminals in lucrative private and public service servicing greed and self-interest, and I am saddened.

The thing that burdens most is everyone knows the unequal treatment and inequitable standards when considering who should populate our prisons, who is of little worth, not to be missed, chum for big fish to devour.

The history of the "drug war" like all "wars" is diversionary.

Until a more balanced, equitable, and civilized standard of human expectation and communal behavior is arrived at --namely-- the rich and powerful dealt the same surveillance and indictment efficiency as the poor and powerless, we will continue to pantomime and pretend a just society while perpetuating a decadent one.

Absent a transformation of human heart and mind, equitable treatment might be all we could hope for at this point.

bad is not opposite of good; each is itself, as is . . .

It is irrelevant whether you call something good or bad. These terms are not fixed and final in place. In fact, it is disturbing to contemplate that these terms are masks for intentions remaining undisclosed and facts without verification. The world is full of illegal, immoral, criminal, and perfectly respectable rascals who double as good, moral, upstanding, and perfectly duplicitous individuals.

What then is to be done?

Tea, chai, with raw milk, helps.

A piece of chocolate. Ginger cookies. 

Something to read.

A story perhaps.

Trust, also, helps.

Walking earlier, fingering beads, I pray for all my brothers and sisters, that they get free from bondage.

That they become happy. Safe. Free.

And come to dwell in their true home.

No need to try to right wrong.

Keep it simple.

Rather, try to be what you are. 

What you really are.

Owls Head

Fog comes in.

Fog horn and border collie sound at same

time.

Big ship sounds single blow out in deep fog.

taking notice

I've begun to notice people are not living forever. They're dying. At all ages.

Obituaries, New York Times: 

• Eydie Gorme, Voice of Sophisticated Pop, Dies at 84 

• William P. Clark, Influential Adviser in Reagan White House, is Dead at 81 

• John Reilly, 74, a Champion of Documentary, Dies

It suggests to me that I will do the same.

At any time.

"my son, my son," dented engraving says

Too many words.

The Gate of Not-Okay

The only thing that can make us uncomfortable with being alone is not liking who we are. That’s what we do when we face the wall: we face who we are. Being okay with however that arises is the most compassion and the most honesty you can ever offer yourself—to just accept yourself as you are. Even if you don’t like it, that’s okay, because not-okay is always a practice gate. We can always include what we don’t like in ourselves. But letting go of worrying about having to become perfect: that’s a gift that we give to ourselves.

- Merle Kodo Boyd, "Okay As It Is, Okay As You Are." Tricycle

Perfect.

Just make your way through yourself.

In dark dooryard on wood Adirondeck chair in front of bookshed under spreading universe of faint light last night round midnight looking up seeing nothing other than what was there as what is there in soundless watch.

Then, comes morning.

Going nowhere; moving through this and that no more

Disappear into act. Where being becomes act. Stillness is act within itself.

Meditation becomes reengagement as what is itself. This is the task: to become what one is, the act of moving, unmoving act, nowhere to go, no one to be.

To become what one is is allowing each arising thought and errant wish to fall away without clinging to them as they go.

What remains?

What remains is what is becoming itself.

Never other. Merely itself. No additions nor subtraction.

Excuse me?

No, excuse is not necessary.

No excuse is necessary.

Go on.

Disappear.

Not to have a relationship; but to disappear into a relationship

Clare to Francis: I am here.

Counting Umwelt

One trillion stars, count them, one trillion stars are said to be within our closest galaxy neighbor, Andromeda. One trillion!

There are, say astrophysicists, at least 100 billion galaxies. Or 176 billion. (Perhaps, some speculate, nearing one trillion galaxies.)   

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/10/10/how-many-galaxies-are-there-in-the-universe-the-redder-we-look-the-more-we-see/#.Ugd3u8u9KSM

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” –Joseph Campbell

This new portrait of the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, was taken with the Subaru Telescope's new high-resolution imaging camera, the Hyper-Suprime Cam (HSC). 

Credit: HSC Project/NAOJ.  http://www.space.com/22177-andromeda-galaxy-photo-hsc.html

And yet...it is all as close and intimate to us as the coffee beans dancing in grinder, person sitting beside you, green grass underfoot, sunshine on hand. As near as god, as near as truth, as near as mere simple 'hello, good morning' to visitors in wohnkuche. We are terribly close to and intimate with all of existence all of Being all of raisin English muffins, organic, this holy instant.

The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth in the Andromeda constellation. Also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, it is often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts. Wikipedia Distance to Earth: 2,538,000 light years, Age: 9 billion years, Stars: 1 trillion Constellation: Andromeda, Apparent mass: ~1,230 billion M☉ Coordinates: RA 0h 42m 44s | Dec 41° 16.152'

It is estimated the universe is 93 billion light years across large. And that there are one septillion stars in the universe -- ( that's 1 to the 24th, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)

http://www.universetoday.com/102630/how-many-stars-are-there-in-the-universe/

It is Sunday morning. Birds on branches and rolling tires on Barnestown Road sound the space surrounding this spate of light.

Man who will be getting out of prison finished quiche and salad at Janet's table yesterday. His 20+ earth ordinary years in prison wouldn't measure that far even in our Milky Way galaxy. Nor would the man sitting one space of chair away from him who blew out torte-cake candles on his entering 70th year look back and see much behind him.

We stumble into the abyss and stumble out of the abyss -- Campbell was right. It is what we see and what we hear, what we feel and what we are capable of learning, this that we find makes up one more world, one more galaxy of perception too minuscule to be measured -- yet, ours.

Count that.

Umwelt.

It counts.

As you, count.

Milky Way Galaxy, NASA