So many precious moments I’ve lived, putting him to sleep after a long story. That sweet sweet interlude afterwards as he drifts off to paradise.
Category / Generic
Spiritual Threshold
It is absolutely impossible to do certain spiritual exercises if you are habituated to an alarm clock. That most insidious of imaginary necessities. And that’s all I am going to say about it…
First Fisherman of April
Every year he comes briefly and faithful like wild violets, 8 or 9 seasons now, long as I defy the clock and occupy astounded this abode. It’s not true, how things seem, that he projects staunch solitude and won’t converse. But you must approach with reverence for nature, and show you’ve learnt how human natures all command respect. Else most you’ll get is a tipped forehead and good day.
2 Forks Off The True
Advisory messages heard at the edge of an early spring’s rushing mountian stream, swollen and forceful with surging transformed snowmelt… Tell of what you’ve seen and know, living waters!
Disputes Among Three Mirrors
Westernized Neo-Buddhism is eager at every opportunity to point out that Self is maya, an apparition, while the doctrine of no-self, anatta, is an early gleaned fruit on the path. I think this is both wrong and an incomplete interpretation. In truth, the conception of Self is evolving, and must do so more, especially now. This is the openly secret message behind the radical Gospel indication of I AM, most clearly evidenced in John. There are stages of I-ness which unfurl to the aspirant, qualities shed and cultivations added. A faucet spills liquid ceaselessly in a theater of consciousness. First we are the water; then with considerable effort we may become the faucet; perhaps later still the force of will which regulates the whole meshugina. But this is still only a beginning… Happy Easter!
Pilgrimage to Moishe’s
My solo evening meal at one of Leonard Cohen’s favorite haunts. Perhaps the main reason why I came was to figure out why I came…
[ Parc du Portugal, in the evening ; Leonard Cohen as an almost-young upstart, from his first album cover circa 1968 ; Moishe’s Rumanian ambience ; Leonard Cohen as an old upstart, performing in London to wide acclaim, aged 75. ]
Shepherd Flutes Of Slovakia
In centuries recently past, but not before men’s memory, deeply haunting and evocative calls echoed over valleys between adjacent hills, under the wing of night in the rural countryside of central Slovakia. The shepherds who loosed these sounds, it is told, communicated observations about wolves numbers and directions to others of their trade. Sometimes five kilometers their informative melodies would traverse. And an art form grew from this, the shepherd musicians soothing one another and flocks alike in the loneliness of the dark central European nights. Whether this legend was ‘true’ no long mattered to me when first I came across it; I knew I had to go there.
[ 3 fujarists under a crystal sky ; Details of traditional fujara decorative carvings ; Young musician integrating an alto fujara into her performance art ; Dushan Holik, selling his musical wares ]
Navajo Healthcare
A Remark You Made
We don’t remember conversations in full tableau. Instead, glistening moments, a bluesy vignette, a mere phrase filled with undisclosed meaning. They shine like supernovae across our lifespan, persistently prodding us to mine their significance with each new contemplation. Gifts which keep on giving.
Recalling a Mentor
I think on biographies often of late. Not that I read them much, just occasionally. I’m more attracted to imagining the life maps of people I’ve crossed paths with, sometimes in major encounters but just as likely in subtle, ephemeral ways, like when a billiard ball kisses another in passing on a pool table. As experience grows, so does the depth of meaning one becomes able to infer from these encounters. It was such an imagination which caused to me look up an old high school teacher not long ago…
||skirmishes|| ||with|| ||reality|| 