tonight is new year’s eve

 The boy's mother gave

Birth today to a fine son --

She a fine mother 

game with no goal, death, an opponent that chips away

Haiku

             (after the Gaudreau brothers, R.I.P.)

 one more drink, he slurr'd

where's my keys, he grinn'd -- then killed

two ice-men on bikes

a followup, such as it is...

Only because you felt badly, and I had no intent to cause such, yet feel badly about such, this, for you:

Tanka (1)

         (for C.B.)

If I was too harsh

Consider it august (2), not 

Me -- mere śūnyatā --

I have grown old loving truth

Wherever it shows Itself (3)

….  ….  ...

(1)

tanka¹ | ˈtäNGkə | 

noun (plural tanka or plural tankas | ˈtäNGkəz |) 

a Japanese poem consisting of five lines, the first and third of which have five syllables and the other seven, making 31 syllables in all and giving a complete picture of an event or mood.

(2). 

adjective 

respected and impressive: he/she was in august company.

:late 16th century: from French auguste or Latin augustus ‘worthy of respect, venerable, majestic’.

(3)

じたい

jitai

    noun, used as a suffix, noun (common) (futsuumeishi)
Meaning:
    itself

exeunt

 I’d rather not tell you what I think

It would upset you

I know you like your faith

Believe it is the best there is,

It becomes duty to inform us

Where we’ve gone wrong

Quoting chapter, verse, and worse

Telling the uncontrite their fate.

I lose patience I’d never had

Only, that day, it was gone

Our differences laid on table

Wondering where that board

Across forehead swung from

his long shadow

 Chill air through window

First cool night in late summer —

Augustine was wrong

like breezes in space

You could do worse than thinking about these things. 

Body impermanent like spring mist; 

Mind insubstantial like empty sky;  

 

Thoughts unestablished like breezes in space. 

 

Think about these three points over and over.

Godrakpa (1170-1249)

The worse is seldom as bad as that which isn't good. 

I'd rather drift through these sentences than stand solid in some firm belief.

Wave if you're passing by. 

freedom is what is truly terrifying

Of course, I'd want that choice.

When to live, when to die. 

Many aver, "Leave it to God!"  I'd assert, "It is being left up to God. Where do we think God is? And what?"

As a filmmaker, I had complicated feelings about Carmen’s choice and my role in her journey. As I first got to know her, I had the hope that the process of filming could influence her to at least postpone her departure. But she had made this decision years ago. 

A former Catholic nun who had spent over a decade in a convent, she said of organized religion: “They instill fear so you can’t be free. Freedom is what is truly terrifying!” She lived the rest of her life rebelling against that fear. I eventually came to the realization that I was making this film because I’m afraid of death, and she was not. 

Carmen’s case raises a question: Should the elderly have the choice to die if they feel ready, even though they could stay with us longer? Making this film did not make answering that any easier, and I do not want Carmen to serve as an example. Ultimately, making this film taught me more about how she chose to live than how she chose to die.

( from, Should the Elderly Get to Choose When They Die?  An 86-year-old woman’s decision to end her life raises complex questions about life and death for a filmmaker., By Guillermo F. Flórez, NYT,  Opinion, 28aug24)

Whose authority does it belong to?

The mugger with a gun? The military with exploding shells and hurtling bombs? The drunk driver going wrong way on the turnpike? The troubled spouse for whom the idea of murder/suicide seems the only option? The prison warden, state prosecutor, citizen jury, or the revenge assassin deciding to take matters into their own hands?

Why would the individual who's life is depleting and health descending not have the wherewithal to determine when their end should be?

Yes, life is sacred.

As is death.

Both, as it should be, deserve reverence and a modicum (or more) of joy.

In addition, perhaps we might make that traditional pledge to pray for all those who, legitimately or illegitimately, take the prospect of death, theirs or others, into their own deliberation. 

I'd prefer that all guns and weapons be lowered.

In that low place of humility, perhaps there, things might become clear.

And we might meditate on that curious Buddhist notion that there is no birth nor death. Just life, living itself, for the time/being.

Ah, Carmen! Thank you and Guillermo for the glimpse.

We look at the sea and we see the sea.

the system we live in

So many changes to act three. 

 "You said it yourself, Big Daddy, mendacity is the system we live in." (--Brick to Big Daddy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,  by Tennessee Williams, play 1955, film 1958)

 From original play to different productions to film of it. The script becomes an object lesson of the ways mendacity crawls across the page and screen.

It exemplifies the very system wherein we dwell.

Our current Big Daddy takes to social media, cable media, and print media several times a day to underline the motif of mendacity coursing through his veins and brain.

So many of us are unwilling to call it what it is.

Maggie the cat, herself a study in anguish and frustration, looks out at us and dares us to be different.

before it can become clear again

Because the history of something has torn spots, rough abrasions and soiled splotches — nothing escapes the ravages of time and human perversion.

That includes matters of faith, religion, and those attending to them.

“Faith often needs to become more complex before it can become clear again.” (—in Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence” by Diane Butler Bass, 2021)

It sometimes takes a steely eye and hardened sensibilities to sift through the debris so as to find any survivors capable of standing up again.

Faith is not for the faint of heart. 

bring joy to all

Joy stands around like a huge cedar tree on a late August morning with sunshine backfilling the clear air of a quiet day.

Verse of the day Deceit is in the mind of those who plan evil, but those who counsel peace have joy. - Proverbs 12:20 Voice of the day May leaders hear the truth the prophets teach us — / that gifts of peace are well worth struggling for. - Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, “A Hymn for Peace” Prayer of the day

God of peace, may those in power hear our cries for peace. Show them that true peace brings joy to all. 

(--Sojourners) 

Sitting in this still life of a sketched kitchen, grateful I am able to hiking-stick walk the 1.5 miles snow bowl greeting dog walkers and seeing two young loons in windless unrippled pond. I listen to A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith, by Brian D. McLaren, (2011)

It is morning prayer as well as intellectual pilgrimage to think about new ways of perceiving ancient narratives. Even the narrative of my curiosity spanning intercultural religions and theologies, comparative philosophical speculation, and deeply intimate considerations of expressions of anatta, anicca, and karma.

Joy is not a stranger. It stands close and seeks fraternity/sorority. It is easy to withstand, easy to be silent with as time goes by.

There's no special club to belong to in order to experience joy.

Turn your head, see the sleeping cat. Turn the other way, the dirt-dug dog.

There's a quietness, an unimposing joy, in thinking about those you currently know, those you could easily know, and prayerfully, silently, wishing them well.

As I do now, thinking of you. 

it's not there

 I'm ready to look into this.

Please point me in the right direction.

Hmmm, let me see --

Whatever you are doing, twenty-four hours a day, in all your various activities, there is something that transcends the Buddhas and Zen Masters; but as soon as you want to understand it, it’s not there.

As soon as you try to gather your attention on it, you have already turned away from it. That is why I say you see but cannot do anything about it.

Foyan (1067–1120)

Ok. I'd like to say something. 

I'd like to say something true.

Let me see.

[Pause]

Huh!

I'll be leaving now.

Pay no attention to me.

so that’s how to disappear

What if I had none 

No expressing opinion—

I would not be seen

contresens

All translation is

Misinterpretation — take

For example, God —

Surely a word everyone

Thinks they know well — laughingly

in his own clothes

 The bicycle will roll with its seven gears but the motor is cranky and shudders when asked to cut in. And I am tired after only a mile and a half.

One more thing to let go. Nor does it matter. I have my books and well-water. So many thoughts stepping down Ragged mountain. It is a kindly set of trails. They do not ask age or health or express concern when one goes high and one low.

The “spy” his outfit caught, one bamboo-slender

Child ringed round by twenty weary men —

Expressionless even when Leo —even when—

Sleep overtakes him clasping what he loathes

And loves, the dead self dressed in his own clothes.

   (P.49, The Book of Ephraim, in James Merrill’s The Changing Light At Sandover, A Poem, 1992)

Who or what it is Merrill contacts with poetic imagination I don’t know.

The Buddhist in me sees nothing else to be object to my disappearing subject.

The Christian in me asks nothing else from the cosmos other than what time it is and what’s the temperature.

These are the clothes I wear.

A wristwatch and a hat.

A chair to tilt back so as to close eyes and drift off a while.

morning for unchurched

 spider strand stretches

overhang to yew bush -- light

breeze through open door