This is the first week I've fallen behind. I'll try to make it up with two haiku this week.
What a week it was. What a harsh, sad week. Not to dwell too much but this was a week of madness (in one case tragic). Which pulls everything into silence. And it wasn't simply me, but the accumulation of stories from my friends and my own sad encounter with the unreasonable (and an unrelated health drama).
I remember my one attempt to write out the positive, but it was so bittersweet I couldn't even touch it. Even that felt too sad.
The Prompt: Dealing With Loss, Part 2
Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara.
"The spring flowers, the autumn moon; Summer breezes, winter snow. If useless things do not clutter your mind, You have the best days of your life." – Mumonkan
And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.
The Drawing
My Haiku
…inspired by my drawing:
Doleful petals Growing pink to green to brown. Growing up to fall.
The Reflection
Not much to say for this one. Just walking through it.
There are good times and bad times, basically extreme times when we need to breathe in order to re-center our frenetic brain. It feels like bad times right now just dealing with the news, but also creative times. Or maybe it's just that bad times demand more creativity from us. I'm thinking a lot today about cultural loss, as well as the great suffering that is caused by those who want to assert, gain or keep power and money. I'm trying to breathe through it and look between those breaths for ideas I can use.
The Prompt: Dealing With Loss
Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara.
"When in wordly activity, keep attentive between two breaths and so practicing, in a few days be born anew." – Shiva
And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.
The Drawing
My Haiku
…inspired by my drawing:
Between two mountains the open valley of breaths. This is where we live.
The Reflection
I'm noticing that I'm gravitating to landscape depictions of meditation and the breath. I'm beginning to wonder if this might be the appeal of New Mexico to Zen Buddhists and mindfulness practitioners.
I recently won a silver Nautilus award. (Have I mentioned that twenty times yet?) Anyway, I purchased the other books of the Silver and Gold winners. The other two Silver winners are both Zen books, interestingly enough. But amazingly to me, both also mention New Mexico as a prominent place of inspiration or a place where some of the poems were written. That makes all three Silver winners books about Buddhism and, to some degree, New Mexico.
I think there's something about the light here, or the water maybe, but probably the wabi sabi of the architecture and landscape that facilitates Zen Buddhist mindfulness. Can't quite put my finger on it, but it's obviously gotten into my head too.
This was a good week. Met with some friends from CNM, cleaned, planted, did some consistent workouts, getting ready for my parents to visit.
The Prompt: Enlightened
Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara.
"Enlightened or not– It is all the very same. Have a cup of tea." – Myochi
And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.
The Drawing
My Haiku
…inspired by my drawing:
So what, the tea says. Your blooming epiphany is fuzz in the breeze.
The Reflection
This reminds me of the very funny line in Gigi by Maurice Chevalier as he's trying to calm down Louis Jourdan: "Have a piece of cheese." It serves the same purpose as the tea in the quote above. Enlightenment is a big word for a small thing. And possibly a meaningless red herring.
Relax. Do something ordinary. When you're upset, sit down and have a piece of cheese.
We have company from Kansas here this week and we've been having a lot of fun tooling around Albuquerque (eating lots of salsa). This is a good prompt for me this week. How do I see ABQ with new eyes when visitors come?
The Prompt: Open Field
Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara.
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; In the experts there are few" – Shunryu Suzuki
And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.
The Drawing
My Haiku
…inspired by my drawing:
Imagine the trees of green possibility in an open field
The Reflection
This might just be one of my favorite Zen quotes. We live in a time where everyone's identity is wrapped up in what they know and lording that knowledge over everyone else or really wanting to prove something. And believe me, I'm right there in the middle of it. I'm a real Hermione Granger myself. But you can get really tangled up in what you think you know. And isn't it amazing what genius ideas beginners come up with? Because they have no preconceived expertise. They have no prejudices around what wont work and ideas around limits. We're so proud of what we know and much of the time, this is our handicap.
I'm constantly trying to tell myself "shut up and forget what you know." Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
I’m still coming across good Black Lives Matter and activist poetry and a look over my web stats shows that the page Poems About Dictators is getting a good amount of traffic also.
In the alumni magazine for my Alma mater, University of Missouri-St. Louis, I read a great article called “Voices of Ferguson” with excerpts from a poet, a criminologist, a counselor, actors from Theatre of the Oppressed and a street medic. I loved the poem by Jason Vasser. Read the article here and click under Vasser’s picture to view the poem that depicts a more peaceful day-to-day life in Ferguson.
I also finished a Juan Felipe Herrera book I picked up years ago at USC’s Festival of Books in Los Angeles, Notes on the Assemblage (2015). The first part felt a bit like slam poetry than what usually appeals to me but the ones I really liked were all Black Lives Matter and activist poems, including these:
And the call to keep-on-keepin’-on in “Poem by Poem”
It’s a beautifully sized book by City Lights Pres and also includes meditation poems like “It can begin with clouds.” And a small ekphrasis section, my favorite of which was “I do not know what a painting does” about how a painting looks back at the viewer.
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Herrera is an Hispanic poet writing about Black Lives Matter but he also writes a few poems in this book about immigration. There’s a great long poem called Borderbus. And there’s “Half-Mexican” I also liked “The Soap Factory,” “Numbers, Patterns. Movements & Being” and “[untitled, unfettered—” which was more experimental. And there’s a great one about human expression called “Song Out Here.”
Visiting Chicago last month, Monsieur Big Bang and I came upon this museum, noticing it because of a Bob Dylan exhibit advertisement in the window of the building.
The small museum packs a big punch. The Bob Dylan Electric museum was one small hallway but filled with memorabilia, the end of which focused heavily on his Nobel Prize winning. The museum obviously considers him an American Writer, which I was happy to see, because it confirmed my existing, documented bias on the issue.
Newspapers weighing in / Bob Dylan's influences / The Nobel Prize Reception Invite
Related, I really appreciated one massive wall of writers and their genre, to show how inclusive they were in considering the idea of the American writer (from songwriters to book authors to poets to playwrights and speech writers).
The permanent exhibit is a massive display of American writers through history, giving you a really good sweep of American ideology in major periods, from Colonial to present day, each exemplar including a photo or artistic rendering, a sample of their major works, a statement of their importance and maybe a big of trivia, all this supplied on swinging interactive triangular blocks.
There were quite a few poets I didn’t know and I made a list of writers I wanted to check out.
De Vaca was the first writer listed (a memorialist) followed by John Smith (autobiography), William Bradford (historian) and Anne Bradstreet (poet). That’s right, America’s first poet was a lady-poet! The display had America broken into categories of colonial, revolution, new nation, and literary independence.
There was also an electronic display on American themes across time. And one entire small sub-exhibit devoted just to the inventions of Edgar Allan Poe.
There was also an amazing electronic board of writing excerpts. The museum called it a Word Waterfall reading “what does it mean to be American?
They had a display on magazines and visitor’s favorite books, a Frederick Douglass exhibit, and two last exhibits where I wasn’t sure when one ended and the other began: The Mind of a Writer and Tools of the Trade (from Typewriters to Touchscreens). I love how contemporary they are!
Exhibits included a table of typewriters you could interact with, a display of first lines, an electronic touchscreen version of Jack Kerouac’s scroll manuscript for On the Road.
There was also an exhibit of writerly habits, writer fuel, and advise on how to organize your thinking.
There were also poetry computer games! One where you would try to figure out missing words from a poem and a word magnet game.
What a fun, interactive museum! My only complaint was the lack of erasers for sale in the gift shop. What writer doesn’t need erasers?
It's a dog's life. So I'm working from home now and I can really monitor what the dogs do all day long and as I contemplate my own sense of peace, I can contemplate theirs as well. They do a lot of sleeping, begging and barking at the world outside the house. Occasionally, they will play with each other.
The last time I worked from home, four years ago, Franz would always try to get up into my lap. He doesn't do that anymore. He's getting too old. I bought him a fancy couch (advertised at left)s to get him to stay in the office with me. Sometimes he'll sleep in it. But only when he feels like it.
Everyone always tells me one of my dog is is a Zen master. Just the other day the vet looked shocked when she was listening to his heart beat calmly up on the table. No vet appointment is going to rattle him! Years ago I went on an archaeological trip with the students at Highlands University in Las Vegas, NM, and one of them spent 10 minutes staring at Franz before saying, "Your dog is intense man!"
The Prompt: Animal Nature
Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara.
"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?" – Zen phrase
And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.
The Drawing
My Haiku
…inspired by my drawing (which looks nothing like Franz but that's the best dog I could do):
Stares like an old sage Barking out the window now Will be asleep soon
The Reflection
I always find it strange when people question the spirituality of animals, especially dogs, who snap to the moment better than anyone. Sure, there are dogs that fret and there's a spectrum of dog-calm and they get furiously off-kilter over territorial disputes…and they do seem to dream (going over all the drama of the day). But they still seem better suited to paying attention than we are. Watch a dog beg at the dinner table. I give them people food just to be able to experience it. They're masters of manipulation and the long game.
Not much to report this week. Had good news and bad news. Settling down, working out again, routine is good. Getting ready for a summer of visitors. Flowers are coming up in the yard.
The Prompt: Going Deep and Light
Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara.
"Moonlight penetrates to the bottom of the lake yet no trace is left." – Zen poem
And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.
The Drawing
My Haiku
…inspired by my blurry moon drawing.
Soft half of the moon runs deep into the balance of tipping horizons
The Reflection
I was doing some reading about how a lot of life's work is calibrating to the challenges and changes. I also liked the prompt poem's idea of making an impression, both deep yet unobtrusive. Yeah, I like that. The book's drawing was the back of Buddha meditating under a full moon. My own drawing took me a while of complicated ideation where the moon was where the heart was. But I had to go full Thoreau and "simplify, simplify."
Most of life is not knowing what's coming. I just went through a reorg again at my new (old) job. Who knows what the future will bring as a result. There are always unintended consequences. The adventure continues. Most of the things that affect your life will remain unknown to you. It's scary but interesting too.
The Prompt: Not Knowing
Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara.
"A wild goose Passing the length of the sky Casts a shadow Into the cold water
The goose has no idea Of leaving a trace, The water no consciousness of a shadow striking through." – Zen Phrase
And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.
The Drawing
My Haiku
…inspired by the drawing.
Shadows of the world In ceaseless adventure Life fish in the sky
The Reflection
For some reason when I started thinking about this prompt I remembered a trip I took with some friends up to Clayton, New Mexico, a few weekends ago. My friend Melo was leading a project to drive drones over some dinosaur tracks there and make 3-D map renderings of them. She showed us the dinosaur footprints and tail tracks in detail and we spent a few days exploring the area (which is my Dad's family's terra sancta so I know it's nooks and crannies). One of the things to do up there is to visit Caupulin Volcano and hike the rim. From there we saw a lot of Turkey Vultures; and they literally look like a child's drawing of a bird! An upside down, flying W!! I thought of that when I thought of trying to draw clouds, birds and fish sharing the sky.
I spent a really fun weekend in Chicago driving around the north side and walking around downtown to see Monsieur Big Bang's old haunts, then going to Champagne/Urbana watching my nephew graduate from University of Illinois. I came hold sick with a pretty bad cold. So this week's Haiku almost didn't make it.
The Prompt: Doing Nothing
Again this week's prompt comes from the Zen by the Brush book by Myoshi Nancy O'Hara.
"Steadfastly doing nothing, sitting there Spring comes and the grass grows of itself." – Zen Phrase
And again, first task is to sit for a meditation on that for 5-10 minutes or however long you feel is good to you.
The Drawing
My Haiku
…inspired by the drawing.
Headless of my care, the smirking dandelion. Nature is a cabal.
The Reflection
Maybe it was the cold talking, but this was the first prompt that I took issue with. Granted my mind is going 100-miles-a-minute these days and I need a good lesson in doing nothing and liking it. But does this saying know the orchestrations the Earth goes through to facilitate a Spring? And my grass doesn't grow itself or of itself. Right now it's demurring to a pack of bully foxtails. But I guess that's not really the point, is it? The world revolves itself and things grow wild without any help from me. So calm the f*#k down.
