|
|
 21 Jul 2007 @ 11:21
Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time---that is the basic message.
---Pema Chodron
Awakened, I hear the one true thing---
black rain on the roof of Fukakusa temple.
---Dogen
I should be content to look at a mountain for what it is, and not as a comment on my life.
---David Ignatow
On the set of Shall We Dance, 1936, are dance director Hermes Pan, Fred Astaire, director Mark Sandrich, Ginger Rogers, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and musical director Nathaniel Shilkret.
Saturday morning, and I'm delighted to read the cover story of tomorrow's New York Times Book Review. Garrison Keillor writing about George Gershwin. I've neglected to report how wonderful I thought Garrison was in the Robert Altman movie about his radio show. I had put off seeing it because Prairie Home Companion can get too cute at times, and I thought a cast of Kline and Streep and Tomlin and Harrelson might be too great a temptation in that direction. And I've heard Keillor personally is pretty aloof and out there, in his own world...so I thought probably this movie is going to be painful.
Besides, for those of us who grew up in front of a huge radio that was bigger than we were---with glowing, radiating tubes in the back that looked like a Flash Gordon outer space city---how many times had we gone to the movies to see an adaptation of a favorite radio show? Yuck! How many were any good? The Shadow? The Lone Ranger? The Fat Man? Arthur Godfrey? A wonderful voice comes out of that dumb guy? Most were about as flat as a Lux radio version of a movie.
But, except when Meryl Streep tries to loosen him up a little, Garrison Keillor is wonderful in the movie. In fact, he makes great fun of himself as someone totally out in his own world. And he nails radio when he tells Lindsay Lohan---who also is wonderful---that nothing ever ends in radio, nobody gets old, nobody ever dies.
But of course the kind of music on the show---oh god, Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly singing Bad Jokes is worth the price of admission...and by the way, The Behind-The-Scenes feature on the DVD may be better than the movie---I say, the music ain't exactly Tin Pan Alley. Tin pans galore, but we don't hear In The Still Of The Night. So why does anyone think Garrison Keillor should be reviewing a new book by Wilfred Sheed about Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Arlen, and Kern?
It's probably because, like me, Garrison grew up in the '40s and listening to radio, so what has come to be known as The Great American Songbook is imprinted in our neurons. If we're walking through Central Park with a girl, and Dancing In The Dark begins to play, we may have to turn our walk into a dance that will be legend in the minds of anyone who sees us. Those songs do that to people. They still do it...maybe more than ever. Many rock singers just have to try an album...like jazz players want that one with strings. Opera singers too...and while it used to be horrible to sit through, some of them are starting to get it. I heard Renee Fleming sing You've Changed the other day...and I had to nudge Billie Holiday over in my mind to make room for her.
So Garrison, like Guy Noir, has blues in the night in his sinews. He can set 'em up, Joe, with the rest of us. The rest of us who have heard a tune on the juke box...a tune so devastating there was nothing more to do but get up off the stool, reel toward the door, and out into the lonely night. Maybe she'll be there. More >
|
|
|
|
 20 Apr 2007 @ 09:57
Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking.
---Dean William R. Inge
I have realized that the past and the future are real illusions, that they exist only in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
---Alan Watts
A Zen master's life is one continuous mistake.
---Dogen
God, how this White House loves that word! Everything they do is ROBUST. The Surge is robust, the economy is robust, our schools are SO robust, anti-abortionists are getting much more robust, and the Gun Lobby never has been so robust! Rove is just busting with robust. He and Bush are in Ohio all the time because we brim with robust!
I suspect it may have been Rove (or his people) who came up with "robust." It has the first 2 letters of his name so that satisfies egomania, and of course "bust" is in it...so he can think of breasts and milk as well as allegiance to his President. What could be better?
The only thing better would be if all Repubs use it...and they do (even when wearing the pink necktie of apology and surrender). Yesterday Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson used it against critics who say the Executive's legal people have been using federal attorneys to wipe out the opposition. She said the department has "a completely robust record when it comes to enforcing federal voting rights laws." The Justice Department not only is robust, it's COMPLETELY robust. It's like Heaven on earth there!
I love this photograph by Doug Mills for The New York Times this morning. There he is, the Attorney General of the United States of America, land of the free, home of the brave. The man used the "can't remember anything" approach to his testimony. At least it's more down-to-earth than the "best-of-my-recollection" song and dance other attorneys general have used. A busy man has to have people on his staff who remember things for him. I understand that. Do you suppose there is someone at Justice who remembers who is supposed to remember the content of meetings? Maybe they can search around.
In the meantime, you might take a look at Greg Gordon's article for the Baltimore Sun yesterday that contains Cynthia's robust remark...and see if you can detect any "legal" strategies in there about crushing free election. And then I guess I have to like best Lara Jakes Jordan's coverage for AP of Gonzales' pathetic appearance yesterday. More >
|
|
|
|
 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 >
|
|
|
|
 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 >
|
|
|
|
 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 >
|
|
<< Newer entries Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Older entries >> |
|
