Saturday, January 01, 2022

la fin

Stop

Me

If 

You’ve

Heard 

This

four bells, saturday, second dog watch

 Headlights through thick fog

northwest up hill Barnestown Road

Phosphorescent glow

one cracked-open shell at a telling

 At wrinkled blanket 

zendo chitta cat faces

new day rainy gray


Tea candle never

knows what shadows it will throw

what prayer be shown



Friday evening con-

versation about birdseed —

how we feed ourselves



words, like worlds, crack wide

open when taken in by 

loving present ears

Friday, December 31, 2021

αλλαγή (allagí) — change

 Change

Is

Correct

Relationship


Let

Us

Change

Well!

oui, mon petit rien

Bells and wood stalls sound

Across ocean, laudes, saying

Yes, really, now, yes

Thursday, December 30, 2021

wherein is whereout

 Not thing in itself

but a thing experienced

intentionally —

Consciousness going out from

Itself to itself as there

three, two, one...

 I've been told hate will

end at midnight New Year's Eve --

followed by mère love

ordinary thursday morning

 One day God shows up

Sips coffee bites fresh donut

Looks out at harbour 

think a-bout this

 Exactly one year

from today it will be five 

days after Christmas

Mark your calendar, think a-

bout it will be just like this

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

how hear the source of sound

 The song said that everybody hurts. 

What do we do? Keep the hurt going? Or, maybe, try healing?

 At their best, Black freedom struggles intensify the virtues of American democracy and lend invaluable support to the search for justice. Amid white violence and Black bloodshed — forces we still face — Archbishop Tutu, like Martin Luther King Jr. before him, reminded us of a lesson we should never forget: that forgiveness and reconciliation are the foundation of a vibrant social movement and a healthy democracy. As King argued, the lex talionis — the law of retributive justice described as an “eye for an eye” in the Book of Exodus — is ultimately unsatisfying and harmful. “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind,” King wrote.

With King and Archbishop Tutu as our guides, we can reclaim moral ground and preserve our humanity while achieving the highest form of justice possible. Archbishop Tutu sweetly reverses the usual hierarchy of the West over Africa in colonial thinking when he argues for a conception of justice rooted in his beloved motherland. “Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative — not so much to punish,” he said, “as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.”     

(--from, Where Is the Forgiveness and Grace in Cancel Culture?Dec. 28, 2021 NYTimes)

We're in such a damn hurry to clean up and clear up what's contrary to our way of thinking, our template for a pure and moral world. 'Kill them,' we yell, 'kill the sons o'bitches!' 

Stop the steal, hang Mike Pence, let those zygotes get driver's licenses and red hats, stop those coloreds from voting out those nice white folks, keep them non-christians out of our country, the hell with the lazy poor trash who don't have trust funds and high-value stocks! Do you know who I am?

You said your students are afraid to talk about race. Are you sympathetic to the idea of keeping certain words out of the classroom context? 

I think it’s dangerous. And there is no word called “the n-word.” For example, Countee Cullen: If we erase the actual word he used, we’re erasing a poem called “Incident,” which should be read because it’s a beautiful poem. Whatever it is that was written,  we need to be able to read it. To me, it’s that simple. And you can call me whatever you want to call me. If I don’t like what you’re saying to me, I have a button here on the Zoom that says “off.” So do you. You have to be free. That’s what I hate about the vigilantism that’s happening now. And what is worth killing somebody for? I live on a mountain, and someone could drive down the mountain too fast and hit a squirrel. That squirrel has to eat, and so it has to go looking for food. Squirrel can’t go to Wendy’s or McDonald’s. So you should go down the mountain at five miles an hour. If you’re late you’re still going to be late. You’re not going to be on time because you murdered a squirrel. 

(from, Talk Nikki Giovanni Has Made Peace With Her Hate, By David Marchese, 26dec2021, NYTimes)  

Tutu knew, and Giovanni knows, what we're made of -- opinions and insufficient words to plumb the deep bottom of our hearts and being. So we skim the scummy surface of polluted bigotry with oars of bored muzzles with fingers on unsafetied triggers looking to take down and take out with bullets whoever is bad, or other, or just in our way.


We have not yet begun to plumb the real depths of wording.

Where, at origin, the urge to convey purpose and meaning grunts upward through mute desire toward intimate communication, saying, 'here, here, I am here!'

We don't hear what is here.

We've become deaf to the mutterings of God.

In unhearing isolation we shout obscenities, 'fu*k you, fu*k you', singing deranged Christmas carols of prejudice and propaganda, ignorance and political nonsense against, and against, and against...

Don't talk of hope. ...I've heard that word before. It's sleeping in my memory. I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died... (with apologies to Simon) 

How hear the source of sound? The profound longing to say: I'm here...I love you...Do you see me? Can you hear me?


Mutter.


Mutter...


Mother?

the view from here

 It is good to sit

Looking at nothing, looking

As this attending

作務衣 *

 Sitting zazen black

Samue *— inner monk working

Still doing nothing

….  …   …

   * Monk's working clothes

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

jeté

 Doe, with quiet grace

Slow motion leaps green fence near-

by oblong gas tank

monocrome

 Ordinary dream,

You see, deer prints in dooryard —

Fresh snow, rope on ground

Monday, December 27, 2021

cowardly and craven

Chaos

Captures

Cacophony of

Craziness throughout

Country


Concern is

Caustic

Casualty of

Crumpled 

Citizenship


Crap

a moment with desmond tutu and tenzin gyatso

A brief, transitory, masterclass of joy. 

Extraordinary footage  

https://twitter.com/steamedhamms/status/1475041964630421510?s=21 

 and 

https://twitter.com/jaiminism/status/1475154652916117504?s=20

Then, the condolences sent by His Holiness. 

How wonderful to have lived in their time!

Sunday, December 26, 2021

where stillness goes

 Perhaps love is reality.

human kind 

 

Cannot bear very much reality

(T.S. Eliot, in Burnt Norton) 

Hence our penchant for diversion and distraction.

 Love is itself unmoving, 

Only the cause and end of movement,

(Ibid)

 Stillness is that which drops down into love.

by all things

 It’s not about control or fear.

It’s all about allowing and acceptance.

Seeing oneself (one’s self) in the explication, expostulation, and exoneration.

“I live by letting things happen.”

— Dōgen

  Reality is that which presents itself beyond our thinking or manipulation. Spiritual or religious reality is anecdotal mythology until it becomes antidotal releasement of misread messaging. So much we hold is not there, not vorhanden (not-at-hand.)

If we don’t know what’s real, we can’t resist.” (Bugs to Neo, Matrix, The Resurrections)

Yes, resist, (from Latin resistere "to make a stand against, oppose; to stand back; withstand,").

To withstand. To oppose might not mean to eliminate. But to make a stand, to with-stand. Our very natures are replete with oppositions. Our personal, psychological, and political selves might be better served by wonder rather than warfare. 

To study the Way

is to study the self.

To study the self

is to forget the self.

To forget the self

is to be enlightened by all things of the universe.

 ~ Dogen Zenji 

The Buddha and the Christ looked at good and looked at evil and wondered what to say about what they saw.

So, too, are we invited to look, and to wonder what response best offers life, peace, and hope of love.

What is being born in us that is source of what is both true and replete with peace? 

A Step 

          (by Robert Creeley)

Things

come and go.

Then

let them.

Having to—

what do I think

to say now.

Nothing but

comes and goes

in a moment.

*

Cup.

Bowl.

Saucer.

Full.

*

The way into the form,

the way out of the room—

The door, the hat,

the chair, the fact...

*

Sitting, waves on the beach,

or else clouds, in the sky,

a road, going by,

cars, a truck, animals, in crowds.

*

The car

moving

the hill

down

which yellow

leaves

light forms

declare.

*

Car coughing moves with

a jerked energy forward.

*

Sit. Eat

a doughnut.

Love’s consistency

favor’s me.

*

A big crow on the

top of the tree’s

form more stripped

with leaves gone

overweighs it.

Pieces of cake crumbling

in the hand trying to hold

them together to give each

of the seated guests a piece.

*

Willow, the house, an egg—

what do they make?

Hat, happy, a door— 

what more. 

                             (-Poem by Robert Creeley) 

Maybe it is seeing.

Maybe, loving.

Maybe — loving seeing.

Or, love/sight.

Maybe it’s not the world that distresses and upsets. But us. Our still as yet inability to see what is there or to love what is seen.

And yet, and yet, and yet…

It is a time of change and exchange.

Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fears!

mediatrix matrix

 Interior light

Has nowhere to move but out

Through open heart/mind