Sunday Papers: Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

"A little wind cleans the eyes."


On the turntable:  The Who, "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970"

Over Naccho, Grande

Cheers to Wes for writing up our recent expedition up Mount Naccho.   

The link is here.


On the turntable:  Mogwai, "Kicking a Dead Pig"

Feet in the Clouds...

From the air, the landscape takes on very different characteristics than on the ground.  The walker orients himself to objects man-made, which strike an odd balance between the comfort of a familiar human scale, and a dehumanizing disregard for his presence.  But from a great height, one encounters a landscape that goes well beyond the chauvinism of time.  The grandeur below was formed over generations, over centuries, over aeons.  Man's presence in it is incidental.  I think of the great forest cover of Cambodia, of the dusty angles of India, of the battle-pocked cones and grids of Laos.  But nowhere on earth I believe has the grandeur of Siberia.  All is tabula rasa, the twisting rivers bringing life onto the slate.  Canyons are as grand as that of Arizona, the mountains are areoli that rise from the tie-dyed steppe.


On the turntable: Drive-By Truckers, "The Unraveling"

Sunday Papers: Peter Fleming

"To read a propagandist, a man with vested intellectual interests, is as dull as dining with a vegetarian."


On the turntable: "Happy Songs for Happy People"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #18

SIVANANDA ASHRAM, KERALA INDIA, 2007

I've always found it difficult to write when immersed in something.  Meditation, martial arts, yoga, these practices require full participation.  One can only write from the role of observer, and in full immersion, this separation is impossible. (On the other hand, being a foreigner in Japan distances you, so it is easy to report and retain).  So the notes from my time in the ashram are haphazard and scattered: 

-Hearing the roar of lions at night and during savasana, coming from across the lake. 

-The sound of someone singing in the shower.   

-The dhobi drying laundry in the sun.  

-Sitting in lectures, the same as it was one thousand years ago.  

-The call of the Asian Koel, what I refer to as the Ali G bird: "For real, for real, for real."

-Sadhu taking photographs.

-Hindu devotional music blaring from the coconut forest, and from elsewhere, the call of a muezzin cuts through. 

-Om graffiti

-Feral dogs hardly recognizable as dogs 

-God as flower behind ear; smudge on forehead, ash symbolic of humility, draws power

-Man made god in his own image. 

-Why can't man answer the simple question, "Who am I?"

-Wizard of Oz as a sacred text.

-iPod Mothersbaugh techno in Singapore airport at 6 a.m.  Upgraded to Business class, and while in my broad seat, read that there are no distinctions between human.


On the turntable, "Meat Loaf, "Bat out of Hell"

Sunday Papers: Alan Booth

"People speak of a Protestant Work Ethic, but there is a Protestant Walk Ethic too, and it is every bit as perverse."


 
On the turntable:  Miles Davis/John Coltrane, "Best of Miles Davis & John Coltrane 1955-1961"
 

(untitled)

Sitting in the mountains,

Giving my life away

With every exhale.

***

Shidare-zakura laden with omikuji,

Sway in the the spring wind,

Like bridal trains.

***

Cold wind rattles the 

Bamboo like skeletons;

Whole sections twisted and fallen.

On the turntable:  Otis Span with Muddy Waters,"Live the Life"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #17

-Interesting that we engage the world as infants, strictly orally, and later, create the world through an another oral process, with words.  

-Hippies still haven’t figured out that you cannot stop war with folk music.  

-US feminists trying to combat men by acting like men themselves.  Non-American feminists utilize their femininity to develop a third possibly, a more holistic one.  

-Rereading The Inland Sea.  Richie brings the muse back to me, his every sentence perfect. 

-The 20th century did a number on the world.  The 21st seems insistent on finishing the job. 

-The house has a “Warning Police Dog" sign written in English but judging from the ferocious look of the dogs (there are two) and quite frankly from the man himself, I’d take a fair guess that he’s on the other side of the law.  

-On protest:  I don’t know why many protests begin in the autumn.  They inevitably wind up defeated by something far stronger than any government, winter.  Protest and politics are pursuits of the leisure class, and as such, are not sustainable as that class doesn’t have the fortitude.


On the turntable:  Magic Sam, "Chicago Folk Festival"

Sunday Papers: Wade Davis

"The measure of wealth in a civilized nation is not the currency accumulated by the lucky few, but rather the strength and resonance of social relations and the bonds of reciprocity that connect all people in common purpose."

 
On the turntable:  Mahala Rai Banda, "Ghetto Blasters"

(untitled)

I used to expect a lot of others--

Hoping for art,

Then for purity,

For truth.

Lately I'll settle for...

(unfinished)

On the turntable:  Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells III"

Sunday Papers: Roger Deakin

"I keep uncovering more and more evidence for a Murphy's Law of publishing: that if a book is truly wonderful, it is certain to be out of print."
   --Notes From Walnut Tree Farm 


On the turntable:  Mile Davis, "Bag's Groove"

Toying with Tanka

Below the waterfall

A still pool.

Flycatchers drinking

Breaking the reflection

Of a granite teapot lid.

***

Dumped ashes from fireplaces

I leave my footprint

In their softness

Legs of stone Fudō

Blackened by pilgrim's pyres.

***

Monolithic tomb--

Frost veiled trees 

In the blue haze of morning.

Percussive tapping of rain

Counts down the old year.

***

Winter twilight --

Barely nodding

Some snow drops.

Dried straw burns black

To spite its falling.

On the turntable:  Marillion, "Misplaced Childhood"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #16

Notes from a Zen film retreat at Upaya Zen Center, April 2010


MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES

Narration comes in where a viewer might grow bored.  The everyday is intensified in a way that takes the eye a moment to adjust. The bows of ships resemble shells and molluscs. The eye first goes to large objects, then we note as figures enter, dwarfed against the ships, or strip mines, or warehouses.  It is like looking at a Chinese landscape painting.  And we too are dwarfed, dehumanized.  No one person is sure of the scale of the system that drives all this.  There is beauty in the shots of tires and freeways, the eye finding relief in the curves, after all the shots of sharp metallic edges.  

Li Po, Tu Fu, and a hundred other poets, whole histories, folklores, cultures gone.  They defined China, and the places that defined them are soon to be gone.

The rhythm of the hands of the old women in the factories.  There is memory in those hands.



On the turntable:  Charley Parker & Miles Davis, "Historical Session"

Sunday Papers: Woody Allen

“God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.”

On the turntable:  Mops, "Rock'n'Roll"

(untitled)

A problem with my recent writing is 
That I’m trying to hit a home run every time.  
They mostly wind up in the cheap seats.  
Why not try for the odd grounder, 
The sacrifice bunt?
I see the next pitch coming--
High and outside.



On the turntable:  Montrose, "At The Record Plant"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #15

Notes from a lecture on Shugendo given by Quentin Durning, May 2009


-Mountains themselves were historically kami.  The Yayoi period  (300BCE - 300CE) created an agricultural base from which shrines rose gradually.

-Mountain deities were (are) female.

-Water brings energy from the mountain; the water god flows to fed the paddies.

-Kofun burial mounds are themselves mountains.  "Going to the mountain" a euphemism on death.  

-From 6th century, one got power from the mountains, an exercise with Taoist roots. Japanese Buddhism in contrast is still, grounded.    

-With the coming of Buddhism to Japan, Shinto gods were combined with Bodhisattvas.

The Heian period saw the entry of mandalas that Kukai and Saicho introduced from China.  Mandalas themselves are mountains.  

-In early history, people went alone to caves, rivers, etc.


On the turntable:  Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins, "Neck and Neck"

Sunday Papers: Brady Fotheringham

"Tourism has opened up avenues of understanding which could yet save us from man's worst obduracies.  But in large numbers tourists have a depraving effect on those who serve them."  
      --On the Trail of Marco Polo: Along the Silk Road by Bicycle


On the turntable: Moby, "Last Night"
 

(untitled)

Deep in the mountains,

A wetsuit

Hangs on a clothesline.

***

Rain swollen Kamogawa

Refreshes the faces

Of stone turtles

***

Looking Toward Ogasawara,
Past surfers on high Izu swells.

People dying out there.

***

Three punk hipsters

Stand in Triangle Park

Waiting for the light to change.  

On the turntable:  The Misfits,  "Collection 2"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #14

Notes from a lecture on Zen


-"Oz didn't give nothin' to the Zen man..."

-Anything is a koan if taken all the way.

-Koan was originally someone's doubt.  When resolved, awakening occurs.  

-Koan 'doubt' vs. Catholic 'doubt.'

-Shōkoku-ji owns Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji.

-"Without self, boredom is impossible."  - Jeff Shore


On the turntable:  Cannonbal Adderley, "Somethin' Else"

(untitled)

On a train at dusk,
Ride through a snowy landscape;
various hues of grey and white.

***

Her lips redder than my wine,
And much more sweet.

***

Dry Farfalle;
Like butterflies 
In a child's collection.

***

At the ancient shrine,
Waiting in line to draw sacred water;
A beautiful girl texts on her cell.

***

Yellow flowers burst from hillsides
Like remnants of 
Ancient splashes of lava. 

  

On the turntable:  Micheal Hedges, "The Best of Micheal Hedges"