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 3 Aug 2006 @ 11:06
In my hut this summer,
there is nothing---
there is everything!
---Sodo
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
---Andre Gide
Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
---Miles Davis
Still Life with Fruit and Shellfish (and insects), 1653
Jan van Kessel
My mother was a country girl, born and raised on a working farm in the dairy country around Frewsburg, New York. That is, she was until her father died suddenly just as she entered her teenage years. Then her mother had to sell the place and move her and her 2 sisters into a house in town. It was a difficult time, but through it all that family and the relatives were strengthened and maintained by a religion of strict fundamentalism. No dancing, no music that wasn't church, no theater, no card games (except one called rook, for some reason), lots of Bible and hours and hours at services. These were the United Brethren, a sect related to Amish and Mennonite, which communities also flourished in that part of New York. They still do, although I understand the United Brethren have disbanded. The radio humorist and writer Garrison Keillor was raised United Brethren and he talks about it sometimes---but not often.
My mother became a registered nurse and met my father at a hospital in the nearby city, where he was working as an orderly. He was not a churchgoer particularly, and some family history showed unrepented troubles. The more successful of the Carlsons were politicians and lawyers. His uncle Samuel was mayor of the town, eventually earning the honor of Mayor Emeritus of Jamestown, New York. All of this did not impress my mother's family one bit. The Johnsons opposed the relationship in spades---er, rooks. Dad had great interest and experience in drama, eventually getting a job with the fledgling radio station there. He also took leading parts in plays at the active community theater. When they married, the Johnsons saw it as my mom's seduction into sin by my father. Mom no longer went to church. When I was born a few years later I suppose I was viewed as some kind of bastard at best.
It was very strange growing up and being viewed by my mother's side this way. We didn't see much of them, but of course some family events were unavoidable. My father was well known in the area and he did his best to be cheerful and at least entertaining, but mostly it all was extremely uncomfortable. I had a cousin on that side who was a boy and about my age. We got along pretty well, but playing together was a bit strange since there was so much he couldn't do---and I had been coached not to mention those kinds of things. By the time he was a teenager he was one of the wildest boys in town, with fast cars and fast girls. His family moved quickly to repair that situation by sending him to a rigid bible college. He came back into the fold and remains there still. His 2 brothers-in-law are fundamentalist ministers. More >
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 2 Jun 2006 @ 09:56
I must confess that I don't have the faintest idea what my purpose is or what's on, and I never have. I became comfortable with that mystery a long time ago---that I would never know how any of these things fit together in any explicit way.
---Gary Snyder
Do not be afraid of the true dragon!
---Zen saying
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is "look under foot." You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise you own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
---John Burroughs
Illustration by Matt Mahurin
As Friday dawns the 1001st issue of Rolling Stone hits the stands. Yesterday the main article in it showed up, as promised, at its website. [link] It's a painstakingly researched work (208 footnotes) bringing together the evidence that George Bush stole the Presidency of the United States in 2004. The showdown was in Ohio, and Kennedy focuses here on the man who did it and how, and who now may become the next governor of this state. Already the Internet is alive with the excitement of such a well-known figure as Kennedy coming forward. His reputation will be difficult to slime but they will try. His fame derives mostly from a simple request that we try to clean up our country's rivers enough that he can fish them and serve a healthy catch to his children. But with this article, things may change! More >
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 16 Nov 2005 @ 09:39
Where is the knowledge that is lost in information?
Where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge?
---T.S. Eliot
Knowledge comes,
but wisdom lingers.
---Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The mountain of release is such that the
ascent's most painful at the start, below;
the more you rise, the milder it will be.
And when the slope feels gentle to the point that
climbing up sheer rock is effortless
as though you were gliding downstream in a boat,
then you will have arrived where this path leads.
---Dante
Paul Gauguin. Eve. Don't Listen to the Liar. 1889.
Watercolor and paste. Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX, USA.
I think we all should agree by now that even if President Bush is a pretty stupid guy, the people behind him who shield him, writing his lines and US policy, are NOT. Nobody gets rich, plundering the planet as (s)he goes---or stays rich very long, by being stupid. What I know to be the case about the great war of liberation of Iraq is it's a pre-emptive war. The stuff about Sadam and bringing democracy to these fine people were afterthoughts. We launched Shock and Awe on Baghdad when the Administration started talk of mushroom clouds over Manhattan---arriving from Iraq in under an hour.
But look here: it was our first pre-emptive attack upon a nation with whom we were not at war. The first in American history. When a smart Administration...with SMART bombs...initiates such a massive innovation in foreign policy, do not these intelligent people consider all the consequences and ramifications? If they say we know things you don't know and we can't tell you what they are, do they not realize one day history will reveal what those things are...and whether or not they were correct? Wouldn't you think about that even if you only were forming a clique against somebody in grade school? When the Principal catches you torturing that poor classmate, would you say, "OK, we were wrong about the kid, but we can't stop hurting him now"? We all know what kind of greed and hatred rage inside a bully. More >
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 16 Aug 2005 @ 07:45
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
---T.S. Eliot
Right now, do you have a phrase that goes beyond the barrier?
The writing brush comes forward and says: Daba-daba-daba-daba...
---Takuan
Just still the thoughts in your mind. It is good to do this right in the midst of disturbance.
---Yuan-Wu
Jean Hudon thinks it over amidst autumn scenery
1
Do I go too far with my headline? Let's take it a piece at a time. How about starting with the drunk part? Like any good ol' American boy, I know a little something about drunks. Been one myself---lots 'a times. I've been described, upon at least one occasion, by a highly spiritual person, as the drunkest man she'd ever seen. I've been flat on my back in a parking lot in Mayville, and couldn't figure out how to get up. So what's involved in stopping such behavior? And how do we know when someone's cured? More >
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 11 May 2005 @ 08:50
Today means boundless and inexhaustible eternity. Periods of months and years and of time in general are ideas of men, who calculate by number; but the true name of eternity is Today.
---Philo
Example moves the world more than doctrine.
---Henry Miller
In Buddhism there is no place to apply effort. Everything in it is normal---
you put on clothes to keep warm and eat food to stop hunger---
that's all.
---Yuan-S'ou
Photo of Ilona and the author on Easter Sunday.
A year and a week ago I underwent major surgery for removal of a prostate gland that had been determined to be a bit cancerous. I wrote about it and talked openly. Cancer is as terrifying to people of our civilization as just about anything we think of. I learned in the waiting rooms, however, that it makes brothers and sisters of us in treatment, as men and women struggle with their own varieties. The silence in those rooms is broken with great relief when we start talking together. I thought writing and letting people know what happens to me might serve some purpose---at least for research because so much effort is going into finding a cure...or even a cause. More >
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