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LETTING GO
Roshi left last week sitting in the garden of the Zen Center, there then not there, as though he let go his 91 year grasp knowing somehow, it was the right moment. He left so quietly those around him did not hear him depart. Half a lifetime ago I sat at his feet, unable to…
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BIG ISLAND
It is his hands you notice first – dark fingers bent and gnarled, several banded in silver, knuckles scratched by the cat curled at his feet, the tip of his index finger sacrificed to a distraction and the saw, untrimmed nails, rough, ragged a torn cuticle, liver spot rubbed raw. The fingers curl gently around the…
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THE FLY
The fly hovers before me I stare at it trying to freeze its diaphanous wings to hold it, still, in my mind’s eye locking it in a moment that might last my eternity. I sit calmly in the chair staring out at the storm building outside the window as the fly stares at me seeing…
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DISCOVERY
In a small storefront, in an older neighborhood of the city, I found it. Sepia coated with a fine sheen of dust and neglect, it lay on the table amid a stack of others, as though a leaf of phyllo in a poorly made stack fresh from the oven. I knew it as I looked…
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THE RIVER
The river, flowing through the heart of the city never pauses to note the cafés and shops lining its banks. The couple in the wine bar look out over the river’s waters but can not imagine the sea. Among them, river, man and woman a thousand stories will go untold.
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FINDING A DIAMOND 沙石集 二
There are endless paths on which to walk, yet we find one and remain on it even when it becomes rocky and rutted. We do not see the road, nor those who cross it, watching only our feet. It is only when we step off of the cliff that our feet are free to walk…
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CASTLE HARLECH
High on the battlements of Castle Harlech the winter wind cuts through me like scythes slashing the grasses in the meadows that roll out toward the distant, mute hills. The plaintive cry of bowmen whose bones are dust taken deep into the Welsh soil are whispers lost in the wing sweep of the circling starlings.…
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Q AND A: SOMEWHERE
Somewhere deep within complete uncertainty lies the answer to the question we are reluctant or unwilling to ask. The only problem is that in peeling back the fear and trepidation we risk reopening wounds we have long forgotten, that are scarred over. Is it the answer we fear or the question, or the inability to…
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WORD
If I asked you for one word how would you answer? In your dreams, do you have both arms, can you write your thoughts on a scrap of paper and tuck it away? You had a lover, once, and he would trace his finger along your thigh. Do you miss that touch as you rub…
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an old writer and his words 