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 21 Feb 2007 @ 10:54
I do not want to be right in theory but in nature.
---Paul Cezanne
Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
---John Burroughs
Year after year
the monkey's mask
reveals the monkey.
---Basho
I'll never grow to like the word "blog." At newciv.org, where perhaps blogging was invented, we've used the word "log" to describe the simple acts of composition that record the thoughts and events of our days. Blog is a heavy, slogging sort of word to me, and yields none of the poetic beauty I associate with the act of writing...especially on the Internet. I like the idea I'm keeping a log of my voyage. Even "diary," with its romantic, secretive connotations, is better than blog---a word that invites derision in its very pronunciation.
Be that as it may, I came to the computer this morning with the innocent intention to catch up on email. (Continued apologies to the legion out there to whom I owe messages and replies.) The very first note I read was from Tim Chavez in Columbus, who's a friend of Annie Warmke, proprietress of the innovative www.bluerockstation.com. I'm sure Tim and I are going to get to meet someday soon, but for now we're still encouraging each other's politics with messages now and then. This one, which he actually sent yesterday, sent me browsing all over the place for an hour...and maybe you'd like to share. Hopefully you already know all about this, but I'm just learning. More >
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 19 Nov 2006 @ 12:06
The greatest sin is to be unconscious.
---Carl Gustav Jung
And so, for the first time in my life perhaps I took the lamp, and went down to my inmost self. But as I moved further and further from the conventional certainties, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me...and when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came---arising I know not whence---the current which I dare to call my life.
---Teilhard de Chardin
You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.
---Thomas Traherne
I love words. "Hack" is one that can be both a noun and a verb...but all the noun-y stuff seems more interesting. The verb has a couple variations besides just its main meaning of cutting through the underbrush or something. There's what you do when you're learning to play golf or tennis...or have a bad cough. Or invade a homepage.
But the noun possibilities are vast. It can be a horse...or a taxi. A writer. Or a guy who hangs around offices of political power. The connection seems to be a creature on the verge of begging for favor or money. Not very complimentary to be called such a low functionary.
I suppose I could be called a hack too, with these little essays over the past few years. Around town I've heard a couple comments that I don't seem to be writing anymore since the election's over. To my face, people have said you must be really happy about the new political situation. I barely can hack a smile in response. Why? What's the matter now? More >
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 22 Aug 2006 @ 09:00
Waves recede.
Not even the wind ties up a small abandoned boat.
The moon is a clear mark of midnight.
---Dogen
You have a saying, "to kill two birds with one stone." But our way is to kill just one bird with one stone.
---Suzuki Roshi
After the ecstasy, the laundry.
---Zen saying
Once Upon a Time by Henry Maynell Rheam
British Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1859-1920
Having worked with children and young people most of my career, I noticed almost immediately a major gap in attempts to communicate with these generations. My childhood took place before television and before suitability ratings became recommended at the movies. Nearly every day I marveled at the wonders created in my mind by books. These were children's books and they were directed to a special world kids were allowed to live in then. When I would mention children's tales from which I had learned important things, I've usually found students in class have no idea what I'm talking about. My childhood was a controlled and protected world and I realize there were disadvantages to being in it. Nevertheless as I become an old man, I treasure the memories, the stories, and the traditions of that abandoned world.
I've preserved, not always carefully, many of those books to share---especially the fascinating illustrations---with my own children. But the timing and the choices available to contemporary youth are very different from the 1940s. My daughter, almost 15, can get back as far as the 1950s with her interests...but she pretty much comes skidding to a stop there. Letting loose of a televised perception is something like coming to the edge of an earth that's flat. Falling off would be madness and a nightmare of monsters. Besides, there are so many "adult" problems kids have to solve, like families falling apart, teachers too "stressed" to take interest, murder and mayhem in the news, being marked by capitalism as major consumers, whether our species will survive on the planet. And so I was interested this morning to learn Norton Anthology series---those huge thick books with tissue-thin pages you may have had to read in school somewhere---has added a children's literature volume. What follows is a keen review of the thing. Despite its reservations, I'm going to see if I can find one today, become lost in that world again, and look for the magic key to get out. More >
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 7 Jul 2006 @ 12:24
Let's have a merry journey, and shout about how light is good and dark is not. What we should do is not FUTURE ourselves so much. We should NOW ourselves more. "NOW thyself" is more important than "KNOW thyself." Reason is what tells us to ignore the present and live in the future. So all we do is make plans. We think that somewhere there are going to be green pastures. It's crazy. Heaven is nothing but a grand, monumental instance of the future. Listen, NOW is good. NOW is wonderful.
---Mel Brooks
The cloud is free only
to go with the wind.
The rain is free
only when falling.
---Wendell Berry
A monk asked Chao-Chou: "What is zazen?"
Choa-Chou replied: "It is non-zazen."
The bewildered monk said: "How can zazen be non-zazen?"
"It's alive!" was Chao-Chou's reply.
---Zen mondo
The author attempts to capture the poet at CAV in Providence, July 1st.
John Tagliabue, the late poet, spoke of The United Nations of Poetry. He created the term sometime in the early 1960s. I don't think he ever wrote a poem about it...or defined exactly what it was. It didn't seem to have an organization or charter or official members. Occasionally, in the early days of its non-existence, he said certain events or readings were sponsored by or part of the activities of The United Nations of Poetry. As the years went by, and there were more poems about "current events" turning up, he mentioned The United Nations of Poetry more and more. Many of us students and friends presumed, I guess, we were members of it...though John never said we were, and I know of nobody who ever asked for a meeting, Maybe I'll learn there were meetings somewhere. There was one on July 1st, however, in Providence, Rhode Island. More >
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 8 Apr 2006 @ 08:06
No matter how much I contemplate this tea bowl
It is still---a tea bowl!
THUS I arrive in San Francisco.
---Soen Nakagawa
At first you will think of practice as a limited part of your life. In time you will realize that everything you do is part of your practice.
---Baba Ram Dass
Living beings are numberless; I vow to serve until all are liberated.
Ignorance and grasping is boundless; I vow to transform and uproot it all.
---Vows of the Boddhisattvas
Chris Mackler / Senior Photographer / cm285504@ohiou.edu
School nurse Janalee Stock administers a color blindness screening to Jared Ricadonna, a student at Morrison Elementary. Stock has been a nurse for the Athens’ City Public School system for 13 years. Stretching her skills among seven schools, Stock spends much of her work week juggling medical emergencies with everyday scrapes and bruises.
Wow, this must be the season of features about esteemed friends! I hope this auspicious Spring is the sign of a stirring and fertile change. First it was a treat to see the article in the Athens News about Elisa Young, and her struggle to farm simply down on the Ohio River in the shadow of more and more power plants crowding the territory. [link] The very next day, yesterday, Ohio University's daily The Post ran a front page story on Janalee Stock, whose nursing serves the Athens School District.
One becomes friends with Janalee in a very practical way. You could be doing almost anything...as long as it is a help somehow to someone else...and you look up, and there she happens to be, doing it too. It could be washing dishes after a community dinner of some kind. It could be setting up for a bake sale or selling the cookies on a street corner. It could be putting away folding chairs from a town meeting. You exchange pleasantries to ease the work, and before you know it and if you discover each other this way enough times, you're friends.
But there's a mystery of some kind to it, a spiritual quality to what Janalee does and how she does it. In the dozen years I've known her, I doubt I've ever talked to her about religious things. She even may shy away from topics like that a bit. (And I mean "shy" in a very good way.) If you say something "spiritual" to her she usually definitely gets it. Mostly she is very down to earth and practical...but in an impressively spiritual way. Let me explain that: as my mother-in-law, Esther Kuhre, and I were talking about Janalee and this article last evening at dinner, I found myself saying, "Janalee never complains." She states facts, she emphasizes goals and objectives, she plans for change...but I think she feels inherently nothing is accomplished by complaining. In fact, that activity can only be negative, spread more exhausting negativity, and ultimately alienate people with its destructiveness. And she just goes around living that way! I look at her do that, and I think, "Janalee is a miracle of some kind!" I hope you take a look at this very impressive piece and feel inspired too~~~ More >
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