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 9 Mar 2008 @ 14:01
Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing, and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations.
---Sogyal Rinpoche
Awareness of emptiness brings forth the heart of compassion.
---Gary Snyder
Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.
---Matthieu Ricard
In the photo, President Nixon greets released POW Lt. Commander John McCain, future U.S. Senator, upon his return from years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, 1973.
We were sitting out Saturday afternoon, trapped in our house by the storm that buried the Ohio Valley in rain, flood, sleet, hail, ice, inches of new snow, and a whopper of a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Only emergency vehicles were allowed on the roads. We were putting off clearing the driveway yet again and hauling more wood for the stoves...maybe until the power went down as the final stroke of doom. But the electric stayed on for some unknown reason, so Dana was on the computer hunting the blogosphere for news of potential Diebold corruption of primary results. There had been increasing rumors through the week about this, and everywhere I went the buzz was Republicans crossing over to vote on the Democratic side. Some were doing it because they were fed up with their own party, but others were trying to screw the results so that Hillary will go up against McCain. I figured who knows who is who...and it's hopeless, and I was trying not to think about it.
But I also knew Diebold was being mentioned again, the company that makes the legislatively mandated voting machines. The business suffered such colossal blowback from corruption charges after 2004, that they changed the name to Premier. But what, if anything, was done about it? Some states, like California and Ohio, got busy and started throwing them out. But was Diebold at work controlling who wins? Blogs were saying it was Diebold and not the voters that delivered Tuesday's results to Clinton. The satirical site www.theonion.com got the biggest laughs of the week, claiming Diebold accidentally leaked the results of the '08 Presidential race. The New York Times combined its story of the spoof with the news that mighty defense contractor United Technologies is trying to buy out Diebold. [link] If the military runs the elections, what do we have? And is there any significance in the fact Hillary's chief pollster is CEO of the public relations company that Diebold uses? [link] So what have the bloggers come up with? More >
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 2 Jan 2008 @ 01:01
When you meditate, invite yourself to feel the self-esteem, the dignity, and strong humility of the Buddha that you are.
---Sogyal Rinpoche
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
---Tennessee Williams
This year,
yes, even this year
has drawn to its close.
---Buson
The Opening of the Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse, 1610-14
El Greco
I had a night of foreboding last night. No, it wasn't the champagne. In fact I went to bed very early. I felt it when I awoke around 3 AM, with fragments of a dream still flickering. People were coming up the hill, closing in...and I needed to decide whether or not to shoot. Rather a moot question, since I didn't seem to have any guns.
Maybe the wind, which by then was battering the house, had shaken me up. The cold front had arrived, bringing the snow from further west that's falling now. We expect about an inch, and I've already put down the potash before the relatives arrive for a Hungarian New Year's feast.
It couldn't have been the hospitality I enjoyed yesterday at Kathy's remarkable home. She and her partner Constantine had invited a few people for a delicious lunch of soup, fresh bread, salad, deviled eggs, cheese and some Crumb's special crackers that I brought. The land is high on a hill of natural oak forest, with amazing outcroppings of huge boulders, possibly shoveled there by the glacier which chugged to a stop just north of there.
When Kathy first acquired the land, she found a cave among those rocks and there she lived until she could build a tepee, and eventually more comfortable shelter. What they have now is a model home, for me at least, that is self-sustaining and off-the-grid. You can see it here [link] and go there to find out more if you're close by. There are more and more energy-efficient and alternative houses showing up around here. People move here especially to try their hand at living this way. More >
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 24 Oct 2007 @ 09:27
If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
---Pablo Picasso
I shut my eyes in order to see.
---Paul Gauguin
When did the lemons learn the same creed as the sun?
When did smoke learn how to fly?
---Pablo Neruda
The photo is of 2 frescoes entitled "Hunger" and "Soldiers" painted by Luis Quintanilla in 1939, newly restored and on permanent display at the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain. The opening was on October 10th, and their incredible story can be found here [link] ("Love Peace Hate War")
All I know is that in this life there is a Grace that somehow reveals people to help us understand. These angelic beings arrive at times when it is clear we do not deserve them, and yet they linger with us and sometimes stay. Such a person for me has been Elyse Parmentier. She has been a friend for 35 years, during times so rough and tattered that most people lost track of me or gave up entirely. But Elyse persisted and always knew me, even though often I did not work at the relationship.
We met at a private boarding school in western Massachusetts, where we were trying to work, at a time of transition for both of us and for the school too. In a nutshell, she was on her way up and I was on my way down. Elyse lived in the town and joined our faculty early in the year only after the teacher she replaced had second thoughts and suddenly left, even leaving all his books behind. Like most of us single faculty, she had to monitor students who lived in her dorm. Her first job like this, it was not easy. It was constant, relentless, except for a couple of vacation periods during the year. In summer we all were expected to leave the grounds and live somewhere else.
Elyse had a bright innocence about her that at first glance could be amusing. But she was smart, could teach both English and French, played piano and sang, loved opera and theatre, and had a wonderful sense of humor. Or, perhaps I should say, at least she laughed at the jokes of the several wastrel lads with whom she chose to hang out, me among them. She was not without occasional crisis too during the 2 years I was there, and something about her brought my heart out so that I tried to be of help.
I just had concluded nearly 10 years of living in New York, and so all the time I was bragging on the City. I would tell her if she really had a hunger for the arts, that's where she should go. She should get out of the Berkshire Hills and into Manhattan. This actually was pretty lousy advice in 1974, and I'm sure down deep I knew that. New York would absolutely devour an innocent like Elyse. But another attribute she always has had is immense determination. She has a faith as huge and vast as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, from which neighborhood she wrote me a couple years later to inform this was her new address. I was astonished, aghast, appalled...and guilty already, if anything happened to her. A stone's throw from Columbia University, it wasn't a bad neighborhood...but what would she do, how would she survive?
She has lived there ever since...in the same apartment. One day she somehow hauled a grand piano up into there. She managed to find an outstanding and beautiful husband too. She always has worked, usually teaching particularly learning challenged youngsters. Of that whole blasted faculty at the school, Elyse is the one who keeps track of us and sometimes even schedules little reunions for those of us still alive and capable of finding our way there.
Then in June came an alarming email. She was in legal trouble. I couldn't believe it, but there it all was. She had been caught up in the system of spying that seems to have become the norm in this free society these last, recent, horrendous years. She had been observed, her actions interpreted, and she was reported. She vowed in the series of emails that she would write about her experiences. Elyse does not use the Internet much, and so she has honored me to post her first essay. Here it is~~~ More >
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 6 Jul 2007 @ 10:57
What is in the mind of the spring wind,
blowing day and night in these groves and gardens?
It never asks who owns the peach and plum trees
but blows away their petals without a word.
---Ch'i-Chi
I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but caring little for it, and much more for my imperfect garden.
---Michel De Montaigne
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
---Edward Abbey
Wonkette
God Shed His Rage On Thee
God (D-Outer Space) had a special message for America on July 4: He hates you all. From coast to coast, the Lord sent his plagues down upon ye, ruining everything from that stupid A Capitol Fourth concert to simple backyard barbecues. His hate was, as always, limitless in scope and awesome in power.
* He sent tornadoes and deadly lightning strikes to the National Mall, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to run screaming for shelter. Those who endured two hours of miserable huddling inside various Smithsonian buildings were finally allowed out again at 7 p.m. and forced to go through the ridiculous security checkpoints all over again. Many simply gave up, went home and wept.
* In New York’s Hudson Valley, eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and across the vast waterlogged state of Texas, hundreds of patriotic fireworks spectaculars and Independence Day Parades were canceled due to ceaseless rain, tornado warnings and flooding.
* Huge, deadly ocean waves off of New York’s beloved Jones Beach forced the cancellation of the July 4 fireworks show because it was too dangerous to send out the fireworks barge! More >
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 16 Apr 2007 @ 14:18
Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.
---Claude Bernard
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
---Henry Miller
I have been reading all day, confined to my room, and feel tired. I raise the screen and face the broad daylight. I move the chair on the veranda and look at the blue mountains. I draw a long breath, fill my lungs with fresh air and feel entirely refreshed. I make tea and drink a cup or two of it. Who would say that I am not living in the light of eternity?
---D.T. Suzuki
The drawing illustrates an article in the current issue of In Character, for which Joannah Ralston is credited with design.
When I set about to look for an image to illustrate this entry, I typed the word "solitude" into the search engine. A number of paintings showed up, but surprisingly not many that were created before the Twentieth Century. A few landscapes from the late 1800's seemed to celebrate Wordsworthian romance, but in his poems too we witness the beginnings of modern isolation.
For some time I've been concerned about a gradual loss of community and neighborhood connection that has occured in my lifetime. This may not be the case everywhere or among people who have not lived the kind of life that I have. I've moved around a good deal---especially in the 1960s and 70s---and am not living in the town where I was born. I tend toward liberal ideals and am not a member of a "mega-church." More conservative folks, who can trace lineage in the same geography back several generations, may enjoy a different experience. But how many of those are there, and is their number dwindling? And what good is neighborhood anyway, if you don't want people meddling in your privacy?
Bill McKibben's article in the current issue of the journal referenced above got me wondering whether a reinvigoration of community may be a major ingredient in solving huge problems that face us planetary inhabitants today. Bill McKibben is teaching at Middlebury College currently I guess, but has lived in the Adirondack Mountain region of New York for some time. You may have read his essays in The New Yorker and other publications, usually devoted to spiritual aspects of environmental concern. He's also written a few books.
This article doesn't talk about TV, industrialization, and overpopulation, which are topics that fly to my mind immediately when I think of wanting to get away from it all and just live in the woods with a computer. Here he suggests the very goal of getting off the grid and living the life of the self-sufficient survivalist ultimately may lead nowhere. More >
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