Barn at dusk.

Dog on gravel at dusk.

No need to fabricate concepts. What we are looking for is right before us.

In the silence of this “night of faith” we return to simplicity and sincerity of heart. We learn recollection which consists in listening for God’s will, in direct and simple attention to reality. Recollection is awareness of the unconditional.
(--p.92, The Climate of Monastic Prayer, by Thomas Merton, c.1969)

Solitude is being-alone.

Community is being-with-others.

Between them, the conversation.

One day bloom. Next day gone

Morning chapel/zendo. Simple silence.

Evening. As sun goes down. Stern.

Brief, remaining, glance. Bow.

Between red nun and green can.

Darkness. Full moon.

Numquam se minus solum quam cum solus -- You are never so little alone as when you are alone. (Cicero)

The moon, just shy of full, hung behind Curtis Island out over the bay. I rowed back with it at 12:30 (the position, not the time) off stern while navigating rear-view mirror through maze of moored boats.

While everyone else
Is so busy striving,
The lone traveler
Is at ease by himself.
He's been living outside of convention
For a long time now;
In his pouch there is nothing at all.
When he walks,
He takes a cane for a companion;
When he talks,
He has the rocks for an audience.
If you ask him what his religion is,
When hungry it's a bowl of rice.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Listening to James Finley on Contemplative Prayer as I row. Earlier this morning in prison we read Dom Christian de Cerge's testament from Algeria written before his death to be read after.

Later we sit with the Buddhist sangha and chant the Heart Sutra that Tony leads. Our final contact was with Olin telling us of the terrific work being done, inmate to inmate, about learning to consider living beyond labels. We talk about a directed college study of Kristof Kieslowski's films.

Philosophy matters. Art matters. Poetry matters. They can help.

The discipline of phenomenology forms one basic field in philosophy among others. How is phenomenology distinguished from, and related to, other fields in philosophy?

Traditionally, philosophy includes at least four core fields or disciplines: ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic. Suppose phenomenology joins that list. Consider then these elementary definitions of field:

Ontology is the study of beings or their being — what is.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge — how we know.
Logic is the study of valid reasoning — how to reason.
Ethics is the study of right and wrong — how we should act.
Phenomenology is the study of our experience — how we experience.
The domains of study in these five fields are clearly different, and they seem to call for different methods of study.

Philosophers have sometimes argued that one of these fields is “first philosophy”, the most fundamental discipline, on which all philosophy or all knowledge or wisdom rests. Historically (it may be argued), Socrates and Plato put ethics first, then Aristotle put metaphysics or ontology first, then Descartes put epistemology first, then Russell put logic first, and then Husserl (in his later transcendental phase) put phenomenology first.

Consider epistemology. As we saw, phenomenology helps to define the phenomena on which knowledge claims rest, according to modern epistemology. On the other hand, phenomenology itself claims to achieve knowledge about the nature of consciousness, a distinctive kind of first-person knowledge, through a form of intuition.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

The chapel is full and present.

Only silence and stillness can do it service.

One of these nights there will be a blockage, say, in my throat. And I will die. It's not a big deal. Only a blockage. Nor is death a big deal. The fear of which is only a blockage. When it occurs, I suspect I'll have a different opinion.

Grasshopper
by Ron Padgett

It's funny when the mind thinks about the psyche,
as if a grasshopper could ponder a helicopter.

It's a bad idea to fall asleep
while flying a helicopter:

when you wake up, the helicopter is gone
and you are too, left behind in a dream,

and there is no way to catch up,
for catching up doesn't figure

in the scheme of things. You are
who you are, right now,

and the mind is so scared it closes its eyes
and then forgets it has eyes

and the grasshopper, the one that thinks
you're a helicopter, leaps onto your back!

He is a brave little grasshopper
and he never sleeps

for the poem he writes is the act
of always being awake, better than anything

you could ever write or do.
Then he springs away.

(Poem by Ron Padgett)

Tell me about the Real Presence -- about the relationship of Form to Emptiness -- about where light goes when it goes 'out.'

What's that? Nothing to say? Hello?

Perhaps no one has ever seen God because God is not outside anything. That, and the possibility that what is 'inside' anything inside is only vast and open and empty space.

Of course I believe in God.

You have to be 'in' God to believe anything.

Mostly I believe that to return to God is to be really present, as who you are, right now.

Two eleven year olds played with Rokie a long while this afternoon -- to the delight of their doting grandfather with whom I drank coffee.

At conversation tonight we wondered about consciousness, form & emptiness, and true religion.

-- Why?
-- Because it is fun! And, too, we restore you because of who you are., Mallory Ringess, the pilot who will never die, ha, ha! We give you our memories because you must know.
--I don't want to know anything.
__ Oh, ho, listen, Man, and we'll tell you everything1 Do you hear the waves whispering the secret? We know you know, Man. The secret of life is just sheer joy, and joy is everywhere. Joy is what we wre made for. It is in the rush of the nighttime surf and in the beach rocks and in the salt and in the air and in the water we breathe and deep, deep within the blood. And the shifting ocean sands and the wriggling silverfish and the hooded greens of the shallows and the purple deeps and in the oyster's crusty shell and the pink reefs and even the muck of the ocean;s floor, joy, joy, joy!
-- No, life is pain, I know. There's a poem; I remember some of it: "We're born in our mother's pain and perish in our own."
-- Life will not perish. We give you these memories so life will not perish.
-- I remember the song of the Host of Restorers.
-- All of the hosts are restorers. That is what we are; that is what we do.
-- I don't want to be restored like this.
-- It is a great song, isn't it? Do you hear the song?
-- I'm afraid.
-- Ha, ha!

The song of Agathange is a great song, but it is a song most human beings would care to hear. Some parts, of course, given the wholely human heritage of that mysterious race, are understandable. Humans and god-men (or even most gods, I think) share the knowledge that matter and consciousness are inseparable. The knowledge is old; ages ago the mechanics found that it was impossible to describe the behavior of subatomic particles without considering the effects of consciousness on the objects they were studying, just as it was impossible to explain the disasterous thermodynamics and poisoning of the Earth, all the while ignoring the conscious and criminal actions of billions of human beings. ...So, the Agathanians revere the unity of consciousness and matter, and they have pushed their belief to the logical end. The ten thousand hosts of restorers were trying to awaken the whole of their planet to greater consciousness. The song tells of the great restoration: The first ecologists had not trusted their miniscule consciosnesses. Had man's consciousness saved Old Earth? No, and neither would Agathange be saved, because man was man, and someday -- even though they made themselves like seals and took to the sea -- the natural harmonies would be broken. Only by creating a consciousness far beyond their own, a World-soul, could they sing a song of total joy, which, after all, is what they sought to do.
(--pp.254-255 in Neverness, novel by David Zindell)

I'd like to hear that song.

Philip Levine is named to be new Poet Laureate. A 1999 poem by Mr. Levine is called “He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do” and ends:

Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words.

A silent song where words have grown familiar with not being spoken.

Not-being, spoken, is silence and joy!

Watching bats fly from barn.

Seeing into Nothingness
This is the true seeing,
The eternal seeing
- Shen-hui (8th cent)

Last meeting of course in prison, Philosophy of Friendship.

There's nothing left but what we have.

Look around.

Do you see anything not there?

That's the idea!

Once born, stay aware of birth.

Once living, stay aware of life.

If you haven't attained clear, true vision,
This causes you to lapse into extremes,
So that you lose contact with reality.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

Once we begin to die, stay aware of birth and life.

Have I forgotten anything?

Oh yeah -- with gratitude for any and all love: my parents, my friends!

With continuation and good will for each.

I leave three pennies on bell buoy off-shore.

Just to feel human. That's what an inmate rehearsing Hamlet said about how he experienced the process of being directed in a play by a tough and caring director. It's This American Life -- always a good bet.

What I call perfection of seeing
Is not seeing others
But oneself.
- Chuang-tzu (3rd cent BC)

"I am Laertes," says one of the actors. He means it. Not just the part he played, but the realization of himself as not other than Laertes.

Being nowhere else is finding oneself everywhere.

ST: In the context of this aching or longing, how can we understand this idea of “the Palace of Nowhere” as our ultimate destination?

JF: The phrase comes from the Taoist sage and poet Chaung Tzu, who wrote: “Come with me to the palace of nowhere, where all the many things are one.” We therefore use the phrase “palace of nowhere” as a metaphor for contemplative fulfillment. That is, the palace of nowhere is a state of awareness in which we realize directly that ultimately nothing is real but love. Or that ultimately nothing is real but God. Or that ultimately the concrete immediacy of life itself is the concrete manifestation of the divine. The reference to “nowhere” means that as soon as we try to back up, to stand and claim what we seem to have found, that it will all slip through our fingers again. And so I deliberately use the phrase “palace of nowhere” to allude to this great paradox. The nowhere is the infinite ground of everywhere.

ST: If you were to imagine for a moment that Thomas Merton was still alive today, how do you feel he would be responding to the current world situation?

JF: I was in the monastery with Merton in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War. The Berrigan brothers would come there to visit him, and he corresponded with people like Boris Pasternak and Bob Dylan. He was one of the Catholic intellectuals who helped fuel the peace movement. My sense is that what Merton would say today would be consistent with what he was saying then. That is, we face the individual dilemma of estrangement from contemplative experience and the preciousness of our own lives, as well as society's estrangement from this awareness. And that estrangement perpetuates violence. Therefore the task of the contemplative today is to be a prophetic witness – a nonviolent witness to the preciousness of all life, at a level that precedes and transcends all ideological positions.
(- From interview with James Finley by Sounds True, http://contemplativeway.org/interviews/mertoninterview.html)

We are the prisoners we visit.

There's no need to resolve or justify or rationalize.

Nothing is real but love.

The day was already laden. Hiroshima is remembered. Transfiguration is celebrated. Silent sitting gathered four of us to be still, to chant, to listen to a reading, then have a circle reflection where each of us offer a response from our practice. We read "In Sync" from the current issue of Shambhala Sun: "When body and mind are synchronized, SAKYONG MIPHAM says, we can live with grace and dignity, grounded and in harmony with the world around us."

The theme of bravery radiates throughout the Shambhala teachings, which were introduced to the West by my father, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The first kind of bravery is being free of deception. Through meditation we are less seduced by afflictive emotions and habitual patterns, so we’re not as frightened by egolessness. We are able to leap into the moment—which is the second type of bravery. Having taken that leap, we gain the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, the third kind of bravery, which reveals the sacredness of our world. Through that sudden display of courage, our whole world is illuminated. As my father put it, “You begin to experience basic goodness reflected everywhere.”

From that act of freshness, our mind is liberated from doubt and disbelief. Such a visionary approach leads to the fourth level of bravery: realizing the dignity of body and mind being synchronized.
(-- Shambhala Sun | September 2011, Excerpt from "In Sync")

Then there was the news from Afghanistan:

Copter Downed by Taliban Fire; Elite U.S. Unit Among Dead
By RAY RIVERA, ALISSA J. RUBIN and THOM SHANKER
Published: August 6, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan — In the deadliest day for American forces in the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter on Saturday, killing 30 Americans, including some Navy Seal commandos from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as 8 Afghans, American and Afghan officials said.

The helicopter, on a night-raid mission in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, to the west of Kabul, was most likely brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade, one coalition official said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and they could hardly have found a more valuable target: American officials said that 22 of the dead were Navy Seal commandos, including members of Seal Team 6.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/world/asia/07afghanistan.html

Someone at practice this morning said it was difficult for him to see the underlying perfection and goodness during the "samsaric depression" mentioned by Sakyong Mipham. That we cannot determine or control the events in Afghanistan, Somalia, Lybia, Syria, or the economic ghettoes of political pushers -- is cause to remind us of the need to go deeper into the silence beyond mind-noise and ego-shouting that deafens us.

Helping each other, service without requirement of recompense, praying for everyone and everything in the world -- these things assist the way we look at and see the world.

The Transfiguration story of Mount Tabor is iconic. The mythic resonance is inviting.

Let us run with confidence and joy to enter into the cloud like Moses and Elijah, or like James and John. Let us be caught up like Peter to behold the divine vision and to be transfigured by that glorious transfiguration. Let us retire from the world, stand aloof from the earth, rise above the body, detach ourselves from creatures and turn to the creator, to whom Peter in ecstasy exclaimed: Lord, it is good for us to be here.
It is indeed good to be here, as you have said, Peter. It is good to be with Jesus and to remain here for ever. What greater happiness or higher honour could we have than to be with God, to be made like him and to live in his light?
Therefore, since each of us possesses God in his heart and is being transformed into his divine image, we also should cry out with joy: It is good for us to be here – here where all things shine with divine radiance, where there is joy and gladness and exultation; where there is nothing in our hearts but peace, serenity and stillness; where God is seen. For here, in our hearts, Christ takes up his abode together with the Father, saying as he enters: Today salvation has come to this house. With Christ, our hearts receive all the wealth of his eternal blessings, and there where they are stored up for us in him, we see reflected as in a mirror both the first fruits and the whole of the world to come.
(--From a sermon on the transfiguration of the Lord by Anastasius of Sinai, bishop, "It is good for us to be here.") http://www.universalis.com/readings.htm

"Here" is all there is.

Some spell it - 'M.i.n.d.'
Some spell it - 'G.o.d.'
Some spell it - the 'T.r.u.t.h.' or, - the 'R.e.a.l.'

For me, the word 'here' covers it nicely.

As I sit on the porch of the meditation cabin wrapping the leather sleeve edge of my rowing oar with tarred string I hear this phrase with a new clarity -- It is good for us to be here!

What is good resides in the profound and supremely mysterious 'here.'

We seldom visit it.

The route is little known.

It goes by way of silence.

Listen with a listening sighting here.

I like Walt's poems. He likes them to rhyme. They have humor. In his nineties, he worries about his wife who is not well. Each fortnight is a delight to see them.

The debate continues about bodies and what is entailed with them.

Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.
- Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)

It's odd to speak of 'having' a body. Or 'being in' a body.

Went rowing at dusk. My body is still chilled.

Something blah this way hovers.

I hardly understand anything.

The world is as we see it. So, we see the world. And it is as it is.

The world we see is the world we get. And when that doesn't seem such a good deal, look again. There's something we're not seeing.

Step back on your own to look into reality long enough to attain an unequivocally true and real experience of enlightenment. Then with every thought you are consulting infinite teachers.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

About our wars:

Total Fatalities: 6,026
Operation Iraqi Freedom: 4,442
Operation Enduring Freedom: 1,584
(Updated June 5, 2011)
-- The Washington Post

Semel in anno licet insanire. ("Once in a year one is allowed to go crazy").

We don't yet comprehend that war is insane.

Nor that there is no one else to fight other than ourselves.

What's the big deal about real conversation?

The body does not know how to discourse or to listen to a discourse. This which is unmistakably perceivable right where you are, absolutely identifiable yet without form, this is what listens to the discourse.
- Rinzai (d.867)

Listen to this.

Then, enjoy the discourse.

One word at a time.

Tide lowers. Ducks jete on to unsubmerged rocks covered with seaweed, nibble a bit, then tuck heads back under feathers. Nap time.

Mass, coffee, and novel Neverness at landing of Camden Harbor before going to other side to bail Jootje after last night's torrential rain and lightning storm.

When you are free and independent, you are not bound by anything, so you do not seek liberation. Consummating the process of Zen, you become unified. Then there are no mundane things outside of Buddhism, and there is no Buddhism outside of mundane things.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

Schooners dry their sails, tourists come to the water, Sibelius plays from public radio.

You must not go towards equality, but must start from equality. Starting from equality does not presuppose that everyone in the world has equal opportunities to learn, to express their capacities. That's not the point. The point is that you have to start from the minimum equality that is given. The normal pedagogic logic says that people are ignorant, they don't know how to get out of ignorance to learn, so we have to make some kind of an itinerary to move from ignorance to knowledge, starting from the difference between the one who knows and the one who does not know.
(--Rancière, Jacques and Lawrence Liang. "Interview with Jacques Rancière." in: Lodi Gardens, Delhi. February 2009. English)

We know.

What we don't know we know.

Tearing what we know and don't know from what we think we know or not know is the work of learning -- investigating what is torn.

Scissors help.

Glimpsing what is between us -- in that torn place -- also helps.

Infinite love, the mystery of God, sees we do not see, and sees for us what we do not see.

"A good traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving."
- Lao Tzu

Life is it's own destination.

Here we are!

I see this. And this is all I see.

Summertime, and mornings are meditation in quiet spaces.

As soon as you sense any lingering or obstruction,
all of it is false imagining.
Just make your mind clean and free,
like space, like a mirror, like the sun in the sky.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

We pray for those whose own prayer needs companioning.

For those whose death is nearing, or has occurred -- recently, or further back, those lingering just on the edge of eternity.

For those whose story confuses them and those who long to be free of stories no longer needed, no longer theirs.

What would you see? The choice is given you. But learn and do not let your mind forget this law of seeing: You will look upon that which you feel within. If hatred finds a place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in death's sharp-pointed, bony fingers. If you feel the Love of God within you, you will look out on a world of mercy and of love.
( --from Lesson 189, paragraph 5, A Course In Miracles)

The day belongs to itself as we belong to ourselves as God belongs to everyone and everything.

Quiet spaces invite us in to reflect on and become what they are.

Until we are all praying for each other in whatever manner each prays.

Quietly.

As we come to see one another.

Source and fruit.

It's all gift!

Surprise visit from Rob, Randy, and Suzanne down from Belfast for Friday Evening Conversation.

Rob said to my “It’s great to see you here!” that, “It’s great for me to see you seeing me here.” A thread in the fabric of the meetingbrook community stitched closer through many years between Camden and Thomaston and Warren.

What you believe is what you see. The label is the behavior. Theory molds data. Concepts determine percepts. Belief-dependent realism. (p.21, "Mr. D"Arpino's Dilemma", in The Believing Brain, From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies, How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths, by Michael Shermer, c.2011)

This morning’s practice reading from Thich Nhat Hanh’s You Are Here the moving story of the war veteran beginning again to live through and beyond the memory of killing children in Vietnam. A roomful of thoughtful reflections on our need to begin again in so many areas.

It is all pervading, spotless beauty;
It is the self-existence and uncreated
Absolute
Then how can it even be a matter
Of discussion that the real Buddha
Has no mouth and preaches no dharma,
Or that real hearing requires no ears,
For who could hear it?
Ah, it is a jewel beyond all price.
- Huang-po (d. 850)

I like the thought that what we believe is what we see.

And if you believe nothing...do you see nothing?

Nothing is the wholeness seeing nothing outside it.

What a gift!

Bald Mountain at dusk is wavy outline against remaining light.

One instant is eternity;
When you see through this one instant,
You see through the one who sees.
- Wu-men (1183-1260)

This morning, out in Penobscot Bay during a 6.7km row, I leave a quarter on R2 bell buoy beyond Curtis Island and red nun, then a quarter on red and white channel marker bell buoy out past Sherman's Point. I leave these coins for mariners, alive or dead, who need passage toll.

You never know who might be in need of a coin for the ferryman. Some arrive unexpectedly. Some forget the cost. Some wander aimlessly in the wide and deep ocean trying to remember where they are going.

It's the least I can do. Even when kayakers or sea gulls remove the coins from the buoys an invisible purse serves the wanderer beginning their journey.

A peopled home is the ocean bed;
The mother and child are there;
The fervent youth and the hoary head,
The maid, with her floating locks outspread,
The babe with its silken hair;
As the water moveth they lightly sway,
And the tranquil lights on their features play;
And there is each cherished and beautiful form,
Away from decay, and away from the storm.
(-- final stanza of poem, The Drowned Mariner, by Elizabeth Oakes-Smith 1806-1893)

Wherever there is loss, there remains a way to go.

The people are being played for fools. One man not the right color has right wing ideologues slashing and spitting at phantoms and fantasies they call government. What they want is a government of their own kind with the power to subjugate and sequester.

If you can see a thought as it arises
This awareness will at once destroy it.
Whatever state of mind should come,
Sweep it away, put it down.

Both good and evil states
Can be transformed by mind.
Sacred and profane appear
In accordance with thoughts.
- Han Shan Te Ch'ing (1546-1623)

The right wing is in it's ascendancy. No one can stop them from their appointed disquisition and diatribe against those they consider other.

A hard time is upon us. Haughty times and heightened inequality loom.

Jesus has been appropriated and compromised by hacks and heinous intent. Where will the ordinary and simple take refuge?

A wasteland encroaches on civil sensibilities.

It is time to move deeper into a hidden geography.

Into the true desert of the heart. Into the vast emptiness of the mind.

Do not allow them the slightest inkling of false fealty. They must come to know they dwell in a desolate deception.

It is possible I am wrong.

That said, do not suffer fools gladly. We are in a hard and trying time.

In prison class on the philosophy of friendship today we read the final pages of Mark Vernon's book The Meaning of Friendship. There is an intimate relationality between philosophy, friendship, wisdom, and moral value. As, too, in the sound of the two words "adios" and "amigos."

There' a journey to make.

What You Have to Get Over

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,
the blue one, especially.
Your first love rounding a corner,
that snowy minefield.

Whether you step lightly or heavily,
you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the distance
before evening falls,
letting no one see you wend your way,

that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,
meaning “to proceed, to journey,
to travel from one place to another,”
as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.

You have to get over your resentments,
the sun in the morning and the moon at night,
all those shadows of yourself you left behind
on odd little tables.

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to
cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,
crawl over this ego or that eros,
then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.

Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning
“that indicated place, somewhere generally seen
or just beyond sight.” If you would recover,
you have to get over the shattered autos in the backwoods lot

to that bridge in the darkness
where the sentinels stand
guarding the border with their half-slung rifles,
warned of the likes of you. 

(Poem by Dick Allen, "What You Have to Get Over" from Best American Poetry 2010, Scribner, 2010)

Most of what is important is just beyond sight in the open-hearted possibilities a reserved optimism allows.

These men are friends.

Over twenty two years visiting and conversing has warned and revealed the likes of me.

The night is quiet. For the moment, that is enough.

It is as if our heart and mind learned something only night teaches.

Everywhere -- in prison, on an island in Norway, in kitchens and street corners and quiet residential lanes away from cities -- actions are taken to rectify or irradiate some impedance, some perceived injustice or blind insult rendered and needing remedy.

Is some shabby variation of underground faux-justice playing out? Are we leaning toward something more immediate than our stated system of justice can pronounce?

Mind has no color,
Is neither long nor short,
Doesn't appear or disappear;
It is free from both purity and impurity;
It was never born and can never die;
It is utterly serene.
This is the form of our
Original mind,
Which is also our original body.
- Hui-hai (8th cent)

What's the difference between truth and illusion?

Not much. Except, neither of them are to be feared.

Only seen through.

With clear intent not to get stuck in either.

As Donne said, every man's death diminishes me.

I am much diminished by events near to home and around the world these days.

Maybe someone wishes to talk about gunning down youth on an island in Norway. Others might wish to talk about a woman who sang and drank and died in London. And still others might find themselves alone in a chair on a screened-in porch in the woods at the foot of a mountain.

It's an odd, funny, and disturbing world. Who knows the punch line?

Let go of all your previous imaginings, opinions, interpretations, worldly knowledge, intellectualism, egotism, and competitiveness; become like a dead tree, like cold ashes. When you reach the point where feelings are ended, views are gone, and your mind is clean and naked, you open up to Zen realization. After that it is also necessary to develop consistency, keeping the mind pure and free from adulteration at all times. If there is the slightest fluctuation, there is no hope of transcending the world. Cut through resolutely, and then your state will be peaceful. When you cannot be included in any stage, whether of sages or of ordinary people, then you are like a bird freed from its cage.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

The world is not a stage. We don't know our parts. We stand slack-jawed staring out at a series of stories that make no sense.

I don't expect to pass this way again. While here, might I be of some help?

A few seconds ago it was 7/22, 22:22:22 on the 24hr time piece. Just that

You cannot describe it or draw it,
You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.
No place can be found in which
To put the Original Face;
It will not disappear even
When the universe is destroyed.
- Mumon (13th cent)

It is time to end the Kabuki theater on the debt ceiling.

End ideology; begin reasoning together.

It is too hot for nonsense.

Let’s face it.

Mourn the sorrow in Norway.

Pray for sanity.

It's not a choice.

Solitude is the way the solitary retains sanity.

Yes, of course, there are other people. But 'society' is optional.

It is the memory of God that informs solitude.

What if there were no black men? What if there were no white men? No red men? No brown men? No yellow men?
Nor any hues depicting various women?

What would we do then? How would we refer to one another without referencing color?

Misty trees hide in crinkled hills' blue green.
The man of the Way's stayed long
At this cottage in the bamboo grove.
White clouds too know the flavor
Of this mountain life;
They haven't waited for the Vesper Bell
To come on home again.
- Ching An (1841–1920)

I tire of the facile referencing and quantifying, qualifying, categorizing and compartmentalizing.

What would we do without our modifiers and descriptors?

Everyone is Buddha. Everyone Christ. All free. No one owned by or owning of another.

A tree is a tree. A dog a dog. God god. You you. Me me. A passing car a passing car.

We have not all been here before; we've been here all along. Where anything is there we are and have been and will be until there is no until.

Well then -- what's this all about, this packaging and selling and opining and attempting to conjure, consecrate, conjoin, and conjugate?

Don't ask me.

I have nothing to add. Or subtract.

I find myself numberless. As all beings, are.

We are countless. We don't count. We're way beyond that.

Way beyond!

When an itinerant zen practitioner stops by to visit, everyone is better for it.

I ask him to bless our zendo. He sits a while. In the silence, unmuffled sounds from direction of his sitting. He rises, bows, invites bell three times, bows three times, and exits.

The place is blessed.

The hermit doesn't sleep at night:
In love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
That rustles the trees
Rustles him too.
- Ching An (1841–1920)

Once we are born, there is nothing we can do but live. Once we realize we are dying, there is nothing we can do but visit a zendo and bless it with our presence.

Each step along this path is the journey of enlightenment.

Whether sudden or gradual. An ordinary Joe. At end, ordinariness is our common embrace -- a transmission of gratefulness, a ceremony reminder at walkway edge to hold dear and let go what is passing through.

It is joyful! It is good!

Thank you, Kozan, ancient mountain!

What is in a name?

Yes -- what is is in a name.

When the mind is properly adjusted
And quietly applied
The Way is attainable;
But when you are too fervently bent
On it, your body grows tired;
When your body is tired, your spirit
Becomes weary.
When you spirit is weary, your discipline
Will relax, and with relaxation of
Discipline, there follows many distractions.
Be calm and pure, and the Way will be gained.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Only allow what is to sound itself through your name and you and I will be exactly what we are in this world.

In this way all is accomplished. In this way everything minds itself.

Nothing's wrong. There are no mistakes.

Follow, if you wish, this way of being.

What about not following nor having a following? Can we just be part of the journey?

What if there were nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish? Whence the journey then?

There's a stream, and there's bamboo,
There's mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hidden, clouded hamlet,
A mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
Have to live, to get that simple.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)

Hot summer day in Maine. Sitting in shade in front of book shed, reading. Morning practice and Evening practice. We are so fortunate!

Without opinions what would I be?

Probably, free.

What is the Christ? Those who say it is the creative and creating energy which brings into being that which is -- these interest me.

Something brings into being that which is. "Christ" is as reasonable a nomenclature as any other symbolizing sound formed into a word.

From the treatise On the Mysteries by Saint Ambrose, bishop
(The sacrament that you receive is effected by the words of Christ)
We see that grace can accomplish more than nature, yet so far we have been considering instances of what grace can do through a prophet’s blessing. If the blessing of a human being had power even to change nature, what do we say of God’s action in the consecration itself, in which the very words of the Lord and Saviour are effective? If the words of Elijah had power even to bring down fire from heaven, will not the words of Christ have power to change the natures of the elements? You have read that in the creation of the whole world he spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created. If Christ could by speaking create out of nothing what did not yet exist, can we say that his words are unable to change existing things into something they previously were not? It is no lesser feat to create new natures for things than to change their existing natures (-- from Office of Readings, Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel).

I like reasonable words.

They're much in demand for lack of them today.

May this feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel be a phrase contributing to a sentence of peace and prayer for peace in this desperate time.

Less depletion of creative energy would be nice.

Maggie spoke the simplest poetry at Quarry Hill, saying: "I'm only here to listen."

A temple, hidden, treasured
In the mountain's cleft.
Pines, bamboo such a subtle flavor:
An ancient Buddha sits there, wordless
The welling source speaks for him.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)

At prison, Charlie came to see what the character in Genesis saw of creation: "It's all good!"

We don't judge someone to be good, rather, they are good, and by seeing so we are sane.

Tommy and I talk baseball.

It was Podres pitching to Berra in 1955 who sliced it to left where Amoros made the grab.

Two years later Brooklyn was abandoned.

Birdsong in Bangor. Outside, on shaded asphalt near portable water dish, Rokpa hunkers in leaf-light.

We' taken first of 4 walks during 4 worker's comp audits driving Miss Saskia.

As flowing waters disappear into the mist
Every heart is its own Buddha;
To become a saint, do nothing.
Enlightenment: the world is a mote of dust,
You can look right through heaven's round mirror
Slip past all form, all shape
And sit side by side with nothing save Tao.
- Shih Shu (c. 1703)

I imagine someone asking: Have you been saved in the nothing of Tao?

I wonder if it would be useful to suggest I carry some particular adult onset peculiar syndrome rather than the equally odd narrative suggesting I carry a propensity toward being a hermit, an anchorite, or a lay monastic cosmotheandric solitary.

The leaves have nothing to say. Nor do clouds and breeze passing do anything but invite gaze. Grass and weeds, wildflowers and white birch move in synchronized laze.

"Friendship is trust your friend will reveal you." (17Feb2011). That's what I wrote then. Today I add: "At the same time a friend is someone respecting the undisclosed. The undisclosed is not something dark or sinister. It is the deep and hidden wholeness. I prefer to look at the undisclosed as that which is hidden from sight, in the same way the eye is hidden from sight but serves as that through which we see.

In Orono we walk past Shaw & Tenney by river construction of hydro project. Old yellow building and barns where fine oars and paddles are made. The car has been moved when I return from walk. Later I learn Saskia moved it to allow tractor trailer a wide turn.

In Lincoln Rokie swims in river. After a bit, I sit in Catholic Church for a spell. The smell of wood pulp plant and closed windows makes stuffy the small interior. One woman sits on opposite side, side window open. I open window next to where I sit. I like that some churches keep doors unlocked.

At lake in Lincoln we park in shade. A few months ago we walked on ice for an hour where now kids swim and play in water. I love the seasons in Maine!

In Milo we read. Two more hours on the road.

At root it is nature -- (what some refer to as 'creation') -- that intrigues. The other narrative, the religious stories that condense history and cosmos into discursive theologies and cosmogonies, that, too, is interesting.

We have to learn about metaphor.

Wind picks up.

The gods breathe hard. Lows and highs converge.

It is a lovely summer day on the road!

At tonight's sitting thoughts arise.

Three sets of words:

• Everything is as it is.
• God is what is God.
• I am as I am.

Later Gerard asks if I can simplify.
I say:

• As it is
• Is what is
• As I am.

One hundred eighty miles today. Milbridge and back.

Hot day followed by three sets of three words.

Three soundings of bell end our sitting,

Thanks, Benedict!
Hermit monastic contemplative.
The monk in me bows in silent appreciation.

"I thought it belonged to a puzzle. But, it's just a piece -- there's nothing else to put it into." That's what Tom said at evening practice.

Thomas Merton suggests silence.

No words, nothing, between you and things.

As dawn is.

A new intimacy of presence.

In creative silence the world presenting itself beyond analysis, revealing what is wholely seen and holy heard.

No barriers.

No separation,

Merely with.

There is today. And breath to live it.

Why worry about anything.

There is no tomorrow.

Lose the idea you are special.

You're not. I'm not. 'Special' is not the accolade we think it is.

Those who are following the Way should behave like a piece of timber which is drifting along a stream. If the log is neither held by the banks, nor seized by people, nor obstructed by gods, nor kept in the whirlpool, nor itself goes to decay, I assure you that this log will finally reach the ocean. If monks walking on the Way are neither tempted by the passions, nor led astray by some evil influences, but steadily pursue their course for Nirvana, I assure you that these monks will finally attain enlightenment.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters, (dailyzen.com)

In prison today we sat with Atwood's poem:

Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

(Poem by Margaret Atwood, “Siren Song” from Selected Poems 1965-1975. Copyright © 1974, 1976 )

Stick with being ordinary.

It confounds the paranoid and the powerful.

Life, they say, goes on.

Millay, in Lament, can't imagine why.

LAMENT
by: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

LISTEN, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There'll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.
-- "Lament" is reprinted from Second April. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1921.

There is no why. And I don't know why this is.

In the Magnificat there is a line: "He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away:”

To send empty away is to leave the rich with something less than emptiness, namely, separation and disconnection. The rich were not sent away empty, rather ‘empty’ is sent away.

In Buddhism ‘empty’ means empty of independent, isolated, separate existence.

Errant thoughts are fundamentally empty; the essence of mind is fundamentally pure. You suddenly realize this essence is originally free from afflictions; the essence of knowledge is inherently complete, no different from Buddha. To cultivate practice based on this is called the Zen of the highest vehicle, and it is also called the pure Zen of those who realize suchness.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

Mary’s soul, in itself, magnifies the Lord.

Mu-ge, here shown guiding winter songbirds to their feeder, died today. Barnestown Road had one too many cars, we suppose, for him to elude.

The ground next to Koto, Jitai, Mini, Sandi, and Cesco is unearthing itself to receive his body.

We are saddened. We are also grateful for his 9 years with us.

And we are equally blest for someone like Tom who found him, waited for us to return home from town, and quietly, simply told us where he was.

I could hear waves hitting against the island but could not see it. Thick fog as I rowed the outer harbor. A solitude surrounding rare.

People cling to their worldly possessions and selfish passions so blindly as to sacrifice their own lives for them. They are like a child who tries to eat a little honey smeared on the edge of a knife. The amount is by no means sufficient to appease his appetite, but he runs the risk of wounding his tongue.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

What is a mystic? Someone in the fog trusting a clarity unseen.

John Dear writes about Thomas Merton:

When Jesus calls us to love our enemies, he said we should do so because God does so. God let's the sun shine on the just and the unjust, and the rain fall on the good and the bad. God is compassionate to everyone, and we should be. too. This is the heart of contemplative nonviolence. Then we are able to see everyone as a human being, and to see God and become like God.

As we pursue contemplative peace like Merton, we learn, contrary to what the Pentagon tells us, that our God is not a god of war, but the God of peace; not a god of injustice, but the God of justice; not a god of vengeance and retaliation, but the God of compassion and mercy; not a god of violence, but the God of nonviolence; not a god of death, but the living God of life. We discover a new image of God. As we begin to imagine the peace and nonviolence of God; we learn to worship the God of peace and nonviolence; and in the process, become people of peace and nonviolence.

"The great problem is this inner change," Merton writes. "We all have the great duty to realize the deep need for purity of soul that is to say, the deep need to be possessed by the Holy Spirit."

On his way to Asia, Merton told David Stendl-Rast that "the only way beyond the traps of Catholicism is Buddhism." In other words, every Catholic has to become a good Buddhist, to become as compassionate as possible, he said. "I am going to become the best Buddhist I can, so I can become a good Catholic." That is the wisdom of Merton's contemplative life, to become like Buddhists, people of profound compassion, deep contemplative nonviolence.

That is what he discovered with his experience in Polonnaruwa when he wrote: "Everything is emptiness and everything is compassion."

(--John Dear, June, 2005, in Thomas Merton and the Wisdom of Nonviolence, San Diego, California, http://www.johndear.org/speeches/thomas_merton_wisdom.htm

This is what makes Merton so interesting.

On a day like today, the fog shrouds, the fog lifts, the fog returns, the fog converses with dusk in sounds only silence endears and endures.

A subtle interdependence.

The only freedom is choosing to be free even in unfree places.

For now, It rains.

We relaunch Jootje with help from Sam and Susan. We row around Curtis Island. In mid-day sun. That will be a rare time-slot for me.

We watch The Dhamma Brothers about Vipassana meditation in Alabama penitentiary. Good for them!

It is a characteristic tendency of human beings to indulge in emotions such as happiness, grief, or anger in response to present conditions, failing to balance these feelings with the awareness that present conditions are results of past causes. It is illogical to face the present only as an object of enjoyment or tolerance, neglecting to use it as the opportunity to create the future.
- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

To live life well now is to create the future. Now, then, whenever -- its' all the realization of true self, true nature.

That, and strawberries on vanilla bean ice cream, does the job.

New American flag flies at barn door opening.

It's a good country.

It could use some good, long, insightful sitting.

Solomon had an advantage over Obama. Both had a choice whether to cut the baby in half. In Solomon's story, he held a live baby. In Obama's, well -- listen to Mac Deford:

No Matter, the Baby Was Already Dead
6/30/2011 9:25:00 AM
Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan, by G. Whitney Azoy; 3rd edition, revised and updated, June 2011

by Thomas McAdams Deford

It's too bad President G.W. Bush, not to mention President Obama and General Petraeus, never read the one book that tells us all we need to know about the social and cultural underpinnings of Afghanistan, Whitney Azoy's Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan. It explains why our 10-year effort to remake that country was mission impossible.

The Afghan war will have cost us half a trillion dollars by year end, with 1,500 dead, and a multiple of that maimed or badly wounded. Last week, President Obama told us two things in his Afghanistan speech:

1) We've lost; and

2) It doesn't matter.

The Taliban, after being routed in six weeks nearly ten years ago, have managed to fight back against NATO forces that over the last two years have topped out at nearly 150,000 in addition to an Afghan force, armed and trained by NATO, growing from 200,000 to 300,000. The Afghan army already costs about $3,000,000,000 a year to maintain; by the time of NATO's departure, it will be up to $6 billion in an economy of $20 billion. Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was nickel and dime stuff compared to this.
(--from The Free Press, Rockland ME)
http://freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=13517&TM=36100.4

We couldn't go into prison today because...the prison environment, including all involved in the environment, is the prison environment. And later in the day we were 15 minutes late for the nursing home. Walt couldn't read, he was too choked up, but Sheilah could, the Browning poem that reflected the 69 years of his and Maggie's marriage. They celebrated this week. Maggie is not well.

Deford adds:

Losing a war is poor politics. The spectre of the Taliban marching on Kabul in the fall of 2012, even with the majority of Americans against the war, would not help Obama in the voting booths a few months later. So he compromised: enough withdrawals to keep his liberal base in line; not enough to risk an Afghan collapse before the presidential elections.

As Pat Buchanan, the original conservative Republican - he was against both the Iraq and the Afghan adventures - put it, "our president did what comes naturally: he cut the baby in half."

True, but give Obama credit: the baby was already dead.

In January 2009, when Obama was sworn in, Bush had left him two lit dynamite sticks: the rapidly disintegrating economy and an equally rapidly disintegrating war in Afghanistan. He had to make sure both didn't explode at once. The "surge" then was a short-term political fix to a double whammy he had inherited. (Ibid)

I used to wonder whether war was merely an awful necessity. Now I sense it to be just another strategy option for political purposes.

War is a brutal choice to sacrifice lives for political gain.

What's wrong with war is our unenlightened mind. It's stupidity is breathtaking.

We need to remember to breathe.

To become enlightened.

To end war.

What do you say, baby?

We finish four weeks at Rockland Public Library leading conversations after four episodes of Joan of Arcadia. Delightful circles!

Why practice quiet sitting?
So you can really get a look
At your original mind.
You look at it coming, look at it going,
And then you know you're the original person.
This latter age has no deep faith,
No one practices the
Direct road to understanding.
All they do is flap three inches of tongue
And lose themselves in the muddle of the mind.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

Listen and see.

There was a line in the early episode spoken by God who said he doesn't appear, Joan sees him.

The more we listen the more we see.

Life, death, pain, suffering, joy, loss, grace, why?

We might never know, but we can feel.

15 years ago today on the feast of Peter and Paul we opened meetingbrook bookshop & bakery on Bayview Street by the harbor in Camden.

When we lost our lease due to the building being sold two years ago we decided, after briefly considering finding a new site, that we would fold back into the hermitage at Ragged/Bald mountains at the Snow Bowl to deepen the contemplative life we'd been living in the open the prior 13 years.

Some loss and some gain accompany every change. We've been happy. We miss the spontaneous encounters with market place 'pilgrims'. (I am reminded of this, playfully, when yesterday Brad P. extends his arm from Volvo window as I cross Atlantic avenue to library, places small sea shell into my hand, saying one word, 'Pilgrim!' before driving toward Sea street. How the reminders come!)

We enjoy the freedoms and solitude of release from so many external demands.

Tonight, at conversation, we continue the Wednesday evening Laura soul-friend conversations begun back then.

The cake Saskia made for evening conversation, and the fruit crepes this morning, were a lovely luck-of-the-draw celebration shared by Susan, Myles, Dean, Jayen, & Dirk. The invisible guests will have to remain anonymous -- with our thanks for their loving memory and belonging over the years.

Well tasted, with gratefulness, for the time.

There are times that any comment, save silent invocation of Mystery, is one too many.

The headline read: U.S. War Costs Reach At Least $3.7 Trillion And Counting

Like some text or scripture read in our daily hermitage practice, perhaps this piece deserves to be read without comment. Followed by silence. And reflection.

The President of the United States has told the American people and the rest of the world that even as the U.S. withdraws some troops from Afghanistan and continues to withdraw from Iraq, the wars will continue for some years. The debate over why each war was begun and whether either or both should have been fought continues.

What we do know, without debate, is that the wars begun ten years ago have been tremendously painful for millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and the United States, and economically costly as well. Each additional month and year of war will add to that toll. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive accounting of the costs of the United States’ wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The goal of the Costs of War project has been to outline a broad understanding of the domestic and international costs and consequences of those wars. The Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University assembled a team that includes economists, anthropologists, political scientists, legal experts, and a physician to do this analysis.

We asked:

• What have been the wars’ costs in human and economic terms?
• How have these wars changed the social and political landscape of the United States and the countries where the wars have been waged?
• What will be the long term legacy of these conflicts for veterans?
• What is the long term economic effect of these wars likely to be?
• Were and are there alternative less costly and more effective ways to prevent further terror attacks?

Some of the project’s findings:

• While we know how many US soldiers have died in the wars (just over 6000), what is startling is what we don’t know about the levels of injury and illness in those who have returned from the wars. New disability claims continue to pour into the VA, with 550,000 just through last fall. Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been identified.
• At least 137,000 civilians have died and more will die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the conflict.
• The armed conflict in Pakistan, which the U.S. helps the Pakistani military fight by funding, equipping and training them, has taken as many lives as the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.
• Putting together the conservative numbers of war dead, in uniform and out, brings the total to 225,000.
• Millions of people have been displaced indefinitely and are living in grossly inadequate conditions. The current number of war refugees and displaced persons -- 7,800,000 -- is equivalent to all of the people of Connecticut and Kentucky fleeing their homes.
• The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties at home and human rights violations abroad.
• The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades, some costs not peaking until mid-century. Many of the wars’ costs are invisible to Americans, buried in a variety of budgets, and so have not been counted or assessed. For example, while most people think the Pentagon war appropriations are equivalent to the wars’ budgetary costs, the true numbers are twice that, and the full economic cost of the wars much larger yet. Conservatively estimated, the war bills already paid and obligated to be paid are $3.2 trillion in constant dollars. A more reasonable estimate puts the number at nearly $4 trillion.

The website with additional information is http://costsofwar.org/

Sophia, orthia!

If I have no opinion about a particular belief, then I cannot be a heretic. A heretic is someone with a different opinion. None had; none different.

Men will therefore see God if they are to live; through the vision of God they will become immortal and attain to God himself. As I have said, this was shown in symbols by the prophets: God will be seen by men who bear his Spirit and are always waiting for his coming. As Moses said in the Book of Deuteronomy: On that day we shall see, for God will speak to man, and man will live.
(--From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop)

I'm never sure what the problem is people have with God.

Perhaps it is their opinion God causes good or evil. I don't have that opinion.

God is the uncaused good. And evil is not that.

An opinion would be other than that.

I've none.

There is no other.

Live this well!
.

Watched Collapse. A whole bunch of pretty good assessment of current condition of the world.

For me the question is: While here, what can I do for others here? I don't mind the absurd existence we're asked to accept as normal. I don't even mind that the biggest, smartest, fastest, most ruthless get the best pickings.

What concerns me is whether I have the courage to live with the absurdity and attempt to be kind, to listen, and be present.

What a pain, these people with so much wisdom!
Even the Buddhas have trouble converting them.
They keep the sutra pages turning,
But never turn their mind;
Ten thousand volumes cram their bookshelves,
All for nothing!
They've sunk into the pit of fame and profit,
Day and night a prey to disquiet and fear.
Their hearts in the end care nothing for sincerity
But moment to moment plot some clever scheme.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

The corrupt get convicted. The rest of us get sick, enfeebled, and set to die. There it is!

At the Cancer Clinic

She is being helped toward the open door
that leads to the examining rooms
by two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
and steps with the straight, tough bearing
of courage. At what must seem to be
a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

(Poem by Ted Kooser, from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004)

That's us with magazines as we experience ourselves shuffling through this mortal toil.

Not quite sure what happens at the door.

The haphazardness, randomness, and chaos of trying to fit things together in disheveled fashion. I accept being what some might call a 'slob.'

slob
noun: informal her no-good slob of a husband: layabout, good-for-nothing, sluggard, laggard;informal slacker, lazybones, bum, couch potato; archaic sloven. (Apple dictionary)

It was an insight at evening practice. My room, car, desk, and barn are in a state of perpetual mess. I like to let things be. Where they are. As they are. The way they fall.

It helps when we are talking ideas about philosophy, spirituality, creativity, or covering the peapod against the threat of rain after brushing her with boiled linseed oil, pine tar, and turpentine. Everything is an act of unexpected fitting together after inquiry, expression, uncertainty, and experimentation.

For those who like certainty, order, and neatness -- who prefer to whip things and people into shape, this kind of laissez-faire must be hell.

Me and thee are curiosities -- as are our ways. Go figure. Or don't. It doesn't much matter either way. Figuring, as in figuring out, or figuring in, is a temporary form feeling equally empty. Ask the Buddhists.

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
It’s always ourselves we find in the sea.

(Poem by E.E. Cummings)

Poets know how to surround you with nothing -- or, perhaps, surround nothing with you.

In addition to his poetry, Cummings was also known for his play, Him, and for the travel diary, Eimi. Him consisted of a sequence of skits drawing from burlesque, the circus, and the avant-garde, and jumping quickly from tragedy to grotesque comedy. The male character is named Him; the female character is Me. "The play begins," Harold Clurman wrote in Nation, "as a series of feverish images of a girl undergoing anaesthesia during an abortion. She is 'me,' who thinks of her lover as 'him.'" In the program to the play, staged at the Provincetown Playhouse, Cummings provided a warning to the audience: "Relax and give the play a chance to strut its stuff—relax, stop wondering what it's all 'about'—like many strange and familiar things, Life included, this Play isn't 'about,' it simply is. Don't try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. DON'T TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT, LET IT TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOU." Clurman believed that "the play's purest element is contained in duos of love. They are the most sensitive and touching in American playwriting. Their intimacy and passion, conveyed in an odd exquisiteness of writing, are implied rather than declared. We realize that no matter how much 'him' wishes to express his closeness to 'me,' he is frustrated not only by the fullness of his feeling but by his inability to credit his emotion in a world as obscenely chaotic as the one in which he is lost."
(--about E. E. Cummings,1894–1962, from The Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/e-e-cummings)

I don't mind being lost. Like the messy house of my dwelling, something lost is preparation for the delight of discovery. Or, if gone altogether, it serves as the realization that need is a travelling belief.
As evening opens and closes itself by letting light go its way, so words are often lost in us, lost on us; not companionable the way feeling stays at elbow sleeve as we make our way through narrow passages.

Toward what we think of, what we call, home.