stir a sad wind

 As strong stormwinds head to Maine, more dangerous destruction blusters from political mouths blowing nonsense seemingly intent on making uglier that which is already ugly in their vitriolic cynicism.

Truth is on the table. A hand is on the carving knife. Step back.

Cut in thirds, split in half,

How can truth be expressed?

Can one see beyond white clouds

With the naked eye?

The monks still have not come

Back from Mt. Kukkuapada.

The leaves of the sutra

Merely stir a sad wind.

        Daito (1282-1334)

Abandoned books on park benches. Folders of studies left in cafeterias. Reports of plans to rethink moribund trends are scattered along sidewalks in rainstorm. Someone sipping coffee looking out window cannot imagine the future.

There is a single light shrouded by metal shade hanging outside bookshed above overturned rowboat in dooryard.

At night, walking out from barn, it comforts.

The mountain is dark and slippery.

Fenced perimeter keep away porcupine and ancient smelly wandering raccoon.

Storm nears.

Blowing currents swirl over captive truth.

A thousand cuts.

No emergency vehicles approach.

A faint and weakening exhalation.

for us to see

 So many suffer —

fires, floods, earthquakes, invasion—

sorrow shows itself

god’s (true) story is seldom told

                (—a waka boxing up our future)

Leave me alone, I

Cannot abide postmodern

Rejection of truth—

I am leaving, I am leav-

ing but your lies will still remain

tiny mind tiny heart

 I knew a bully once

Big mouth, big ego, fat ass

Show off — you know him

a short story from brooklyn corner

In the news the Republican Speaker of the House says committees will commence inquiries into impeachment of President Joseph Biden. Because... yeah, Donald Trump. 

Like a Rabbi looking at a recalcitrant young Yeshiva student, I find my affect a yech shoulder shrug and disappointed eyebrow raise turning away to see if there's anything of any importance to attend to rather than yelling into the wind.

In Hebrew, the word conventionally translated as Egypt in the Haggadah is called mitzrayim. The name is derived from m’tzarim, meaning “narrow straits” (mi, “from”; tzar, “narrow” or “tight”): a place of constriction, tightness, limitation, or narrow-mindedness. Each of us lives, at least at times, in our own mitzrayim, the narrow straits of seeing few options, or being defined by someone else who has more power than we do in a situation, or feeling so unseen that we absorb someone’s projection so thoroughly we come perilously close to forgetting who we are.

(--from Real Life, by Sharon Salzberg)

Like the pedestrian on the curb just hit by errant driver jumping said curb, looking up from cement sidewalk to the worried faces of passers-by, all you can do is make the calculation whether there will be legs enough to stand you up, hands to brush off grit, and strength of will enough to say "I'm fine, I'll be on my way" to the frightened eyes following your incredible recovery.

This is America today. 

le ventriloque de dieu par contumace

Do you see me? No?

I am content to be looked 

for — not to be — found

difference not division

 In dust and breeze through

time and geography souls

drift through our bodies

reconstruction of reality is wisdom at work

 There is truth, (start there)

Then there is narrative told

From each perspective.

The skill is to listen care-

fully with thought discerning

their common towering courage

 Holding hands stepping

Out into new dimension

She and he fell free

thinking back to september eleven

Who knew, no one could

Before things happen before 

what’s good turns and stares

Before words shroud what we feel — 

no one could, nor any should

things that are hard to figure

 sixty years later

agent tells he found bullet

behind Kennedy

in car leather dispelling

odd magic bullet theory -- 

the canvas can do miracles

The zen view often comforts.

I have lived for more than fifty years,

Floating in the sea of birth and death

There is nothing to grasp.

Shin’etsu (1639-1696) dailyzen

Even when  — especially when — offering nothing

I look into my empty hands.

idea and reality walk into a bar

“And while the future’s there for anyone to change, still you know it’s seems, It would be easier sometimes to change the past.” —Jackson Browne 

Tomorrow I’ll  not

fly into tall towers be-

cause I am not whole

I will destroy idea

I carry about the world

if interested in un-koan, contemplate neither

 Some things can be known

Other things cannot be known —

Meditate on this

This cannot be known nor un-

known — only ask — What Is This?

it might be unusual, but

 It’s only numbers

I don't know what they mean, count

me out — ah, zero

rolling thunder mukta sutra antiphon

Rainy matins dog

plops down in doorway, exhales 

sweet prānāyāma —

brahmana to langhana

this inter-religious night

when being enclosed has benefit

 Cousin porcupine

waddles between yurt and gate

where dog and I watch

not bothering to meet up with his body

 Our lives are spotty. 

How would memoirist thomas merton write his final day in Bangkok? The talk he gave. The cryptic ending about he’ll disappear. The reference to all having a Coke too prosaic a final comment for biographers.

The the fiasco of narrative about last minutes. There would have to be mention of heat, bungalow, tile floor, a bathroom, a standing fan, a faulty wire, a wound on back of head, a dead body.

His dead body. How would he write that?

He’d add wit, sardonic allusion to nihil obstats and green-billed censorship, mimeograph runoffs and notes from Dan Berrigan volunteering to edit his work (please, please) down to measurable worth.

But would he know how he died? Would he feel his heart give out, or hammer to back of head, or electric current running up arm across chest? Would he care once a final breath left him to circulate in the suddenly changed room that everyone who came into the room wherein his body was breathless did a pisspoor job of making sense of what actually happened?

Merton would suggest he quickly found himself in Gethsemane on porch of hermitage looking over pond and field as monastery bells tolled time for hours to be prayed. Who would want to stay in Thailand while police and officials decided what story of their own to tell?

Spotty.

Misplaced modifiers, unrelated facts about early life, someone he fell in love with, photographs undocumented and poems lacking explaining strophe. 

He’d begin by saying he didn’t expect to die, not then, not there. He’d say something a Zen Buddhist would adopt as a koan and find a zafu to sit with for an hour. He’d say some words about the nothing he experiences as he tries to pray. Then laugh. He’d think that prayer would taste cold and biting like recently iced Coca Cola.

Thomas Merton wouldn’t write the final page. The reader would turn the penultimate page and find mid-sentence an empty space where three final paragraphs should be. No brush stroke, no haiku, no unsatisfying conclusion leaving the reade wanting clarity or closure.

No. He’d leave the last page blank.

When his body was delivered back to the monastery for burial he wouldn’t bother meeting up with it.

There would be a bird in a tree at edge of field doing what songs they do in late afternoon. There would be clouds trying to decide whether to rain themselves into sweet smells of soil and puddle. An easy breeze would pick him up and carry him to a fond memory just off to the side of anything he could recollect.

Of course he’d write all this down. Where’s my pen? My notebook? 

My word? 

do you know what it’s like on the outside

                “For things to reveal themselves to us, 

              we need to be ready to abandon our views about them. “ (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Just like that turning

corner looking back not a

thing there — verition

I don’t know what you think goes 

on but I’ve no idea

say nothing, listen

 There are times when night

far advanced wakes you up with

noiseless reverence

Looking out window faint light

tolls monastic mute prayer

circulating converse

 In prison we talk

aporia -- but we are 

uncertain -- read poem

Singularity by Howe

then argue about Descartes

trembling to caress the light

 Lowell said it — “All’s 

misalliance. Yet why not 

say what happened?” —Word!

quieter still

Someone dies, nurses

attend after family 

leaves — vigil — home — (home)

turn turn re-turn

 What is neither yes

nor no —where can you stand be-

tween one and other

the energy necessary to reveal itself is incalculable

 Scripture speaks of God

Nature keeps her counsel — dark

matter does neither 

fallback strategy

 Cat decides to nap

until I go get food tin

downstairs in kitchen

and no

Some think that it is easier to shoot and kill someone than to persuade them to think differently. It’s not a good strategy but it is a deep dark background insinuation of the gun people in our society to differing opinions, lifestyles, things believed — shut them up, shoot them!

Nothing on the horizon seems to be appearing to countervail that mind set.

Get your gun. Buy your bullets. Say goodbye to your life. But first, shoot them bastards.

Someone, somewhere, is writing a suicide manifesto, scoping out a vulnerable population, checking to see what his favorite deranged and obscene ranting fool is condemning today, and remembering all the slights and cancellations aimed at him since 2nd grade. Cruelty festers. And then there are murderous weapons.

“Bless me father for I have sinned” is replaced with protestations of mental illness, 2nd amendment rights, and nullifying juries.

What place blessing? 

Giving metta as a skillful means doesn’t mean you agree with this person or approve of their position or their choices. It simply means that you acknowledge that they are a human being just like you—they want to be happy, to live in peace and safety, and to have good health. When you offer metta to a person who frustrates you, you’re including them in your wish that everyone has the conditions to thrive and live with joy. This is because we all deserve to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. This is true even for people you don’t like or those who are dangerous. You can adopt an attitude toward them of “I love you and no”— knowing that you will do your best to stop them from exercising their poor judgment or causing harm, while at the same time wishing for them to have well-being and ease.

(—from, Want to Change Someone Else’s Mind? Try This Instead. by Kimberly Brown, In tricycle, July 2022)

I own no gun.

I say “no” to the argument all our differences can be shot and killed.

Difference is mostly what we have.

Be different — don’t shoot.

the year before she gave birth

 Christ, she said from dream, 

is emergence, (fifty two 

years ago in Bronx) —

Nothing then, it explains all

Now (is she still listening)

diffusing

               (after Lynn Casteel Harper)

 Finishing the book

On Vanishing she infers

“Vapor, vapor, all 

Is vapor.” Ends book: “Vanish-

ing is still life” — perfectly

what is necessary is so infrequent

 Sipping cold water

Hot September afternoon

Reading new purchase

A God That Could Be Real — truck

at gate — panting dog lays down

feeling wobbly

 Light breeze through hot light

Sun over harbour yoga

troup stretches on grass —

September Texan’s rental

car with Florida plates click

face to face

 Look again.

Do not accept anything simply
Because it has been said
By your teacher,
Or because it has been written
In your sacred book,
Or because it has been
Believed by many,
Or because it has been
Handed down by your
Ancestors.
Accept and live only
According to what will enable
You to see truth face to face.

Buddha

I am looking.

Thank you! 

just that

what

    do

        you?

think

respectfully declining

 I am not running

for president, not now, no —

(do vote, and wisely)

I’d rather sit quietly

within breeze sidling through trees

price of doing business

 Bee lands on jewel

weed, blossom breaks off falls ground

flies away no thought

not one thing is true

 Tibetan holding

Prayer wheel next to cross with birds —

How well the world spins

the work we do not know we are doing

 Two cats lick chops bowls

Empty. Listening to book

On Vanishing — blank

Mind — Alzheimer’s steals loved ones

Death before death vacancy 

monks at night outside barn

 St. Bernard mix sniffs

frog in dooryard under bright

moon Labor Day eve

building bridge across brook

 Here’s the thing, practice

Is for well-being of all —

Even done alone

each practice a different universe

dog's raw food ready

chime on stove insists -- on rug

muzzle on paw, waits

leeching the life out of words

Beauty is the absence of temporizing. 

The aesthetics of poetics surrounds inspiration with the raw feeling of presence for the radical duration of this glance, this moment, this departure letting be and going on leaving behind brief light for others to sense someone was here.

Ensōs of pre-ruminative eternity dipped onto decaying matter moving elsewhere.

His censorship came from the outside and was a crippling burden to him, but all artists feel the weight of their own self-censorship—What can I write about? What should I write about? How should I say it?—which in some cases can be paralyzing. Merton felt this self-censorship too; it was exacerbated by the paradox that he had taken a vow of silence and had a compulsive need to write. On aesthetic grounds, he was not free of the conflict many moderns and postmoderns have felt: What is aesthetic discipline, and what is a straitjacket that leeches the life out of the words? (—from On Thomas Merton, by Mary Gordon, 2018)

A hospice sitting next to bed of the actively dying. Nothing to do. Nothing to say. The breath of attention as is moves away to passing necessities the touching amenities of anonymity and evanescence.

Whatever you think

You are saying

It is already too much

For the time-being 

no one in the place

 The hour prayer

Begins, moon sweeping night off

Roof, dog barks in dream

because prayer arises

 What monastery

Is this? Tolling bells from France

Compline festina 

long weekend

 Kitchen now quiet

Guests gone sailing,  hibiscus 

Blossom outside red

Sweet empty house for three days

Wind vane rower air dory

it is not one nor the other

 There’s something to the thought “It is joy without sorrow.”

You are no different from Buddha.
There is no other Dharma.
Simply let your mind be carefree.
You do not need to contemplate
your action and to purify your mind.
Let your mind be boundless
and without any obstruction.
Be free from going and coming.
Whether you walk or stay,
sit or lie down, and whatever
you see or meet,
all are the subtle functions of Buddha.
It is joy without sorrow.
This is called Buddha.

Fa-yung (593-657) dailyzen

 Do not think that sorrow is sorrow. Not that joy is joy.

Neither is there joy without sorrow. Nor is there sorrow without joy.

True mind, Buddha mind, Christ mind is joyful sorrow and sorrowful joy. The relative and the absolute are identical.

Be saved from delusion.

Enjoy yourself.

Beyond self there is nothing other.

now

Waka

      (for JFH)

 

It's a good word, "Now"

and you are a good person

to wear it today --

it's how I remember your

birthday -- always now

no fetters, no path

Who has been occupying this room? Who looks into hall at naked torso under tilted hanging plant with tenement window buildings in distance? Who reads In The Dark Places Of Wisdom by Peter Kingsley on a Wednesday afternoon between two mountains in a hermit’s room a half century’s eve (plus one) after lad’s birth near Hudson River of fond recall?

No one I know.

All obstructions of defilements

and karmas of worry and trouble,

are in origin, empty.

All causes and effects

are dreams and illusions.

The great Way is empty and vast.

It is beyond thought and deliberation.

You, at this instant, have this

Dharma and are without lack.

Fa-yung ( 593-657)

A Leatherman for his carry bag and Merino wool vest for his warmth this coming season will arrive after Labor Day.

He is a good lad, a good man.

I think of Rāhula:

Rāhula (Pāli and Sanskrit) was the only son of the Siddhārtha Gautama (commonly known as the Buddha) (c. 563 or 480 – 483 or 400 BCE), and his wife, princess Yaśodharā. He is mentioned in numerous Buddhist texts, from the early period onward. Accounts about Rāhula indicate a mutual impact between Prince Siddhārtha's life and the lives of his family members. According to the Pāli tradition, Rāhula was born on the day of Prince Siddhārtha's renunciation, and was therefore named Rāhula, meaning a fetter on the path to enlightenment. According to the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition, and numerous other later sources, however, Rāhula was only conceived on the day of Prince Siddhartha's renunciation, and was born six years later, when Prince Siddhārtha became enlightened as the Buddha. This long gestation period was explained by bad karma from previous lives of both Yaśodharā and of Rāhula himself, although more naturalistic reasons are also given. As a result of the late birth, Yaśodharā needed to prove that Rāhula was really Prince Siddhārtha's son, which she eventually did successfully by an act of truth. Historian H.W. Schumann has argued that Prince Siddhārtha conceived Rāhula and waited for his birth, to be able to leave the palace with the king and queen's permission, but Orientalist Noël Péri considered it more likely that Rāhula was born after Prince Siddhārtha left his palace.

12 years after Rahula's birth, the Buddha returned to his hometown, where Yaśodharā had Rāhula ask the Buddha for the throne of the Śākya clan. The Buddha responded by having Rāhula ordained as the first Buddhist novice monk. He taught the young novice about truth, self-reflection, and not-self, eventually leading to Rāhula's enlightenment. Although early accounts state that Rāhula died before the Buddha did, later tradition has it that Rāhula was one of the disciples that outlived the Buddha, guarding the Buddha's Dispensation until the rising of the next Buddha. Rāhula is known in Buddhist texts for his eagerness for learning, and was honored by novice monks and nuns throughout Buddhist history. His accounts have led to a perspective in Buddhism of seeing children as hindrances to the spiritual life on the one hand, and as people with potential for enlightenment on the other hand.

wikipedia 

History is a curious circumlocution. 

Often beyond thought and deliberation.

We circle back.

Make amends.

Take the next step.

Do the next thing needing to be done. 

Bowing with gassho, earth looking back.

empty lease

 Obstruction — my self

Pretending — no one buying

Empty shelf, closed door

tierce aporia

 Listen to chant — such

Quiet panegyric — tells

of no uncertain 

leaning spire of tacked cross

 Does it matter whether there is God? Whether a theological construct based on scripture and tradition, or an astrophysical emergence from the intellectual intuition of interested minds?

I look out through glass doors of wohnkuche at yew bush, jewell weed, and hibiscus tree. Two sets of rubber books hang askew from leaning spire of tacked cross spouting moss in dooryard slope bottom of mountain as rain begins flecking leaves and petals.

And so, there is earth.

There are planets. There are stars. Galaxies. Dimensions. The unknown. 

How important is it that there be an intelligent intentional interpreter creating reality for all sentient and inanimate beings in the universe?

We brought home some Italiano bagels from the Bagel Cafe yesterday. And there's fresh coffee.

Thunder rolls in from the Bay and rain falls down mountainside. Darkness at late morning.

What is life like without the thought of God? Without threat of punishment in hell? Without the frantic or fanciful preaching of pastors, priests, mullahs, and rabbis about our deviant natures and need to belong to their congregations?

Rain on embedded stones where car and truck prattle forward to parking spots outside barn complaining about dirt on their floor mats and scratches along sides.

I have always loved the God beyond the officials of institutions claiming to own God.

The God approached by poetry and mysticism, speculative theology and phenomenological philosophy.

In the eyes of those saying goodbye.

In the hearts of those hurting and uncertain.

God help us all!

turn around

 There is no God, not

there. Here is where God shows up

from middle of us

a different theological tradition here

After lovely colloquy with Jack, an Episcopal priest, this interview from The Christian Century comes across my desk. It is an interview with theologian David Bentley Hart, by CC contributing editor Ross Allen. 

An excerpt:

 I think for most Christians this will sound radical, but you’re suggesting that the end result of grace is that we, ourselves, become one—truly unified—with God.

Yes, and again, this is directly from Maximus the Confessor and Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa and the book of Acts: “In him we live and move and have our being.” Maximus says the whole purpose of creation is the calling forth of creatures from nothingness to enter into the infinity of God directly and to be perfectly united in the Logos in Christ.

As the patristic formula put it, God became man so that man might become God. To say “become” is a bit misleading, though. Every little Logos of everything is itself a modality of the divine presence already. We don’t have to mollify the shockingness of that language—for patristic and medieval theologians it’s simply obvious.

You go so far, in the book, as to suggest that we “become uncreated.” Readers familiar with radical theology might hear this and think you’re talking about a kind of ego death, destruction of the self as it is collapsed into the apophatic ultimate. But you’re drawing on a different theological tradition here.

I am. Becoming uncreated is not the same as becoming nothing. God, recall, is uncreated, and he’s hardly nothing. Un­­creation is not the destruction of personality but the fulfillment of personality in each of us—in our becoming utterly transparent to the Logos that’s the ground of our own personalities already. It’s theosis: it’s to become God with a capital G.

Paul teaches this explicitly in 1 Corinthians 13: “For now seeing only is in a glass darkly but then . . . face to face.” Remember that in the ancient world, looking directly into the face of another is not a privilege you enjoy with your superior. If he reaches down and lifts you by the chin and raises your face to his, this is an act of extraordinary grace. Paul is talking about a state of union between equals.

(—What we think we know about God, by Ross M. Allen in the September 2023 issue The Christian Century). “Anyone who thinks he knows the orthodox consensus can always be shown to be wrong,” says David Bentley Hart.

 Theological thought becomes more interesting than a lot of other formulations about the difficult to explain.

Good company, this.

this bright awareness

I'm glad to know people who travel, go sailing, climb mountains, attend festivals and parades, sign up for workshops, stand in crowds when candidates speak and make promises. They do it for me. I look out window at retired tea kettles hanging from iron wind vane listening to the audiobook The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd by Mary Rose O'Reilley. 

Then there is Hung Chih Cheng Chueh: 

Silently and serenely, one forgets all words,

Clearly and vividly, it appears before you.

When one realizes it, time has no limits.

When experienced, your surroundings come to life.

Singularly illuminating is this bright awareness,

Full of wonder is the pure illumination.

--Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157).  (dialyzen) 

O'Reilley is saying that in Plum Village, in the meditation community, there is no place to hide. I know she means this as an always being out there in practice and job duties, saying what you mean, meaning what you say. But I hear it in an additional way. 

That "no place" is a good place to hide.  

Where is no place?

No place is where no self occupies. It is where everything is itself and nothing other.

Nothing other is an invisibility of sorts wherein one becomes one and completely with what is there.

Being with what is there is the elimination of the illusion of separate self and the realization of an isomorphic resonance, an unwelt, with the surrounding environment.

This is not, in the language of psychology and sociology, a fitting in, as though our mental health depends on our ability to navigate the patterns and demands of interactive societal necessities.

Rather, it is a disappearing into the core of care, a presencing of presence, an embodying of the dwelling-place of the Alone, accompanied by an awareness of being able to step aside to make room for Another.

A being-there of there-being, a being-with, an action of inaction, effortless activity surrounding the uncontainable openness of inner wholeness.

The cat and the dog face toward the Waterford wood stove. The other cat sniffs the footrest of the light blue recliner. 

          Haiku    

                     (ex nihilo) 

It is a wonder

there is anything at all  

with one noticing

humani nihil a me alienum puto

Augustine is ripped over the doctrine of original sin.

I’m wondering if we’ve gotten it wrong. 

 “Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto”.

It means: “I am human: I consider nothing human is alien to me”. The quote expresses the fundamental unity of humankind. It is probably not a coincidence that the quote is from Heauton Timorumenos, a play by Publius Terentius Afer, who was a North-African (Amazigh) immigrant to Rome. He was a cosmopolitan who was familiar with Amazigh (North-African), Carthaginian (Phoenician), Latin and Greek cultures. Today, we would say that he hails from a “multicultural” background.  (Quora)

We are born into not-yet humanity.  

This not-yet human is prelude to becoming human.

Some have called that not-yetness sin. As if some failing has taken place.

Not so.

We are enroute to becoming human.

We’re not yet there.

We trust, some day, we will be.

The fully human is sin no more.

Jesus, it is said, became human.

And so might we.

ride the possibilities

 Between us.

What is taking place between us. . .

You can only see what you know unless you are willing to look with another’s eyes, rub your tusk or horn against another’s to communicate the Imaginary. How queer, to be unseeable until typification evolves to include one of your subject positions. My bone could sense other males before I was caged by words, even when I couldn’t imagine it. Sometimes when you look you can only see what others and acceptable as scenery.  

 

It’s this accepting other’s names and words for you that fence in, domesticate, and delineate the Imaginary. It’s what drives near threatened species to extinction’s edge. When we can’t see ourselves is when we’ve completely disappeared.

For me, writing poems is a way of breaking that cage, a way to have the unicorn become the narwhal become the speaker become the writer become the reader all at once. It is a resistance to colonial forms of Imaginary takeover—a rebuke of having my dream space occupied by measures that insure that what the United States calls a chair is a chair  Sometimes a chair is a kursi, a pirha, a golposh, a saddle, a chariot. I want to ride the possibilities of what a chair can be into the darkest shadow of Lemuria, or across the galaxies.

(--from, Unicorns, Narwhals, and Poets, by Rajiv Mohabir)

When does nothing become something? When does something become nothing? 

What is between something and nothing. . .

Let's consider it possible that what is between us is what is real and only to the extent we step into and inhabit that between, that middle space, do we begin to become real, do we begin to move from not-yet human to human (anthropos). ((ἄνθρωπος) is Greek for human.)

It is more than possible that those who designate their fellow creatures as "only human" or as human are, in fact, not-yet human, or, on the way to becoming human. 

It is also more than possible that the historical misunderstanding of the one called Jesus the Christ is due to the misunderstanding of what it means to become human.

What does it mean to completely disappear?

To step out of ourself into the empty space between you and another?

That place wherein a completely new being is formulated, an interrelational place one might call engaged, nuptial, human?

Go ahead, ride the possibilities.

What can we be. . .

together?

hand washing dishes pots and pans

 One by one candles

Burn into holders table 

Lights exhaust themselves 

There’s only so much to be 

said so much to hear — its late

life behind bookcases and ticking time pieces

 He knew there were more

dimensions than eye or mind 

could see — worlds in worlds 

his ignorance overlooked —

How to dwell outside and in

can i go now

 I sit alone. And?

And nothing. Sit alone stand

Alone. Nothing else.

sit nomen innominatam reverendus

 blessed be the name

which is every name, deep

within the nameless

look around look within you

such soundless silence umwelt

neither created nor destroyed

 What’s the matter with …

(fill in the blank) — body gone

Mind gone, soul gone — we

Say “dead” as if we knew— still,

What’s the matter with what’s gone

still life with footsteps

 Rain on roof cat on

Rug stillness throughout morning

Tea kettles hang on

Weathervane above handtruck

Rusting where blue paint flecks off

no matter what t.aquinas or m.eckhart think

 It’s not the image

It’s not the mirror holding —

it is the telling

What it is what it is not —

mere story is everything

augúst cheerio

late august, clear air

year nears end, soon thirty first

auld lang sein -- be gone

not hearing anything

 Rhetoric lost the 

debate and interview last 

night — obfuscation

what if all opinion went missing

 thinking of being

alone -- nothing moves in room,

(cat yawns), plane in sky

like breeze through prayer flags

 don't mind me, I'm off

bible quoters -- a respite --

preferring silence

dogen zenji is on to something

body and mind drop 

stillness and silence remain

alone without fuss

a sketch on wall

 It was a long time

ago we were friends, as I 

recall, but i might 

be mistaken — thing about

time — it changes perspective 

consider this

 Finding fault finds fault

Responding with compassion

Retains humanness

incarnceration

                        (Toward an obscured sorrow: n. embodying with presence each prisoner)

 walk into prison 

out same morning, nod, passing

through conversation 

we are ghosts in each other

stepping through delight with words

the same as he usually is

Tina sends Wendy Cope poem from The Writer's Almanac "Being Boring." It fits so well.

But it was the sentence later on about Hart Crane that brought me up short:  

  In 1932, while sailing on a ship from Havana to New York, he came out on the deck wearing a topcoat over his pajamas. He took off his coat, folded it neatly over the rail, and jumped into the Gulf of Mexico. His body was never found.  https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2003%252F07%252F21.html

I did not know that.

It takes me to the first two stanzas of his poem "The Bridge" (1930):

 How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest

The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,

Shedding white rings of tumult, building high

Over the chained bay waters Liberty—

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes   

As apparitional as sails that cross

Some page of figures to be filed away; 

 —Till elevators drop us from our day ...  

(--from, The Bridge: To Brooklyn Bridge, by Hart Crane)

 It remains a curiosity -- the taking of one's own life. It is so widely frowned upon. Often condemned. In fact, illegal:

Suicide remains a criminal offence in at least 20 countries around the world, with some laws dating back up to 160 years ago.

Criminalising suicide doesn’t prevent people from acting on suicidal thoughts: it simply stops them from reaching out and seeking help in times of acute crisis.

In fact, at the World Health Assembly in 2019 all health ministers agreed that decriminalising suicide was an effective way to reduce deaths by suicide when they approved the World Health Organization (WHO) Mental Health Action Plan for 2021-2030.   

https://unitedgmh.org/knowledge-hub/suicide-decriminalisation/

  Except for those with untreatable or close terminal illnesses without any hope of prolongation or any quality of life, I opt for discouraging anyone from acting on suicidal ideation or moving toward setting plan to fruition. 

Why would I discourage suicide?

Here's Wendy Cope:

Being Boring             

                 'May you live in interesting times.' Chinese curse 

If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring. 

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion - I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last.
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring. 

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

I'll stay with that preference. . .

for the time-being.

domine ad adjuvandum me festina

 At three in morning

Rain, going to dooryard truck

Close windows, compline

not until now

 Monks chant Lauds from France

Mystery sound mattering

What we call God, here