Greetings,
Here is a fine article on Poetry and Meditation by Gary Snyder in Tricycle. Beyond wild.
Teasing the demonic
Wrestling the wrathful
Laughing with the lustful
Seducing the shy
Wiping dirty noses and sewing torn shirts
Sending philosophers home to their wives in time for dinner
Dousing bureaucrats in rivers
Taking mothers mountain climbing
Eating the ordinary
Metta.
Greetings,
After living in a small sleepy little southern Cambodian river town for four point five months doing my work, I've shifted my base to another small, yet slightly larger, little northern river town in the now a days.
It feels good to be exploring new geography, engaging the senses, observing energies. I found a room in a rural area outside of town in a family compound along the brown river. Go with the flow. It's the perfect zen zone for gardening and writing. Playing in dirt and rearranging sentences.
No internet. This means fewer entries for now. My focus is on more extensive creative work. It reminds me of living in remote Spanish mountains immediately after 9.11 while working on the literary memoir. Writng every morning and climbing in the Sierra Grazalema mountains every afternoon. Balance.
There, I'd jump on a local bus into Ronda at random to see electronic communications, blog and post images. Here, I really wanted to get a big black Hummer with tinted windows so my neighbors would be impressed, shocked and amazed by my ostentatious lifestyle, however, I will frugally settle for a small black bike with a bell, basket and generator light. Low tech, efficient and fun. Traveling at the speed of a single rotation.
You are a fluke of the universe. Take advantage of it. Being disconnected from the distraction of the web is a cosmic comic blessing.
Metta.
Greetings,
W.S. Merwin is named Poet Laureate. From his earliest scribblings, Mr. Merwin has had a conception of poetry that is strongly tied to music. “It’s close to the oral tradition,” he said. “It’s close to song. You have to hear it before you can understand it.”
Although raised in the Western tradition, he said he feels more affinity with an Eastern one, “being part of the universe and everything living.” With that exhilarating connection comes responsibility, however. “You don’t just exploit it and use it and throw it away any more than you would a member of your family,” he said. “You’re not separate from the frog in the pond or the cockroach in the kitchen.”
Metta.
“For a Coming Extinction,” from “The Lice”:
Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing
+
For the Anniversary of My Death - 1967
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what
Greetings,
Ostim: an industrial wasteland manufacturing zone near Ankara.
It's time to go a wandering...inside the reality magic show, welcoming the opportunity, the gift as it is to receive, shifting into another zone of influence and experiential discovery. (Bursa)
As they know you are leaving, this distant. Perhaps they have repressed, regressed into their real way. I appreciated seeing, knowing, understanding how it is, how some people feel, O so sad and withdrawn in their personal way. Their Zen: Awareness. Moment.
As usual my ghost moves through a transparent knowing. Tell me a secret. Screwing up is a virtue.
Sit by the cafe window. Sky, clouds filled with light: gray production pollution, dust, winter icicles, vapor, yellow haze, solitary birds on wing, rolling and tumbling...this small cafe and sky window, the kind Kurdish woman's hospitality, her delicious manta, a sanctuary from the chaos.
Take the 1310 metro to Ostim. Strange industrial landscape where men cannot afford gloves inside childhood's winter. Remove their hats and make monkey groom females in exchange for sex, and all the capital people slog in their struggle
remembering Rumi, how a human being is a kind of conversation, dancing down all the days of early winter clean cold silent
The art and elements of a Japanese folding placemat: shapes, designs, edges, art. Free form, free spirit. Play.
Draw, paint, sing, dance, disappear. Seize the day.
I love the smell of garbage in Cambodia.
Metta.
Human business plan.
Nature's business plan.
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