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A NOVEL IDEA
If I were a character in a novel, sayby Kawabata, that evening we mettwenty years ago, I would haveplaced my hand lightly on your shoulder,and I would have felt a heat,embers of a passion that would,in hours, leave me consumed by it. I was a middle-aged, soon to bedivorced man on his first datein thirty…
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NIGHT APPROACHES
The clouds this eveningare the deep gray that so longto be black, but the retreatedsun just below the horizonlingers long enough to deny them. The space, shrinking, betweenthe clouds, is the gray of promisethat the night will soon deny,and the birds who take overthe preserve, chant their vespers,each in his or her own language,uncommon tongues…
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MY PAIN
I want so to say that i feelyour pain, but we’d bothknow that was an utter lie. I can tell you abut my pain,describe it at great length,and I will be utterly disappointedwhen you admit you can onlyimagine it as a reflectionof your own pain, which Iam certain doesn’t beginto rise to the level of…
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KENSHO
Tonight, if all goes well, I will bea monk in a good-sized Buddhist temple.I am hoping it will be in Nara,at Todai-ji perhaps, or Asakusaat Senso-ji, or better still somewherein Kyoto, although it might well bein the Myanmar jungle or somewheredeep within the Laotian highlands. One problem with that world isthat I have no control…
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KASHYAPA’S FLAGPOLE 無門關 二十二
Kashyapa’s golden robetake it up if you want. It won’t fit at all wellKnock down the flagpoleor, if you wantjust eat the flag. A reflection on case 22 of the Mumonkan (The Gateless Gate)
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LANGUAGE
The Hawaiian language has 12 letterswhich is important to understandparticularly if you consider writingan apostrophic poem, not to a personor thing, but to a letter of the alphabet. It might help to explain why Hawaiianpoets never write about zoology orthe role that zygotes play in life, andleave zymurgy to the haoles, fornative Hawaiians prefer a…
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ERSE WHILE
Growing up, I never imaginedthat I was Lithuanian, I mean Imight have as easily been from Mars. And it was only in my dreamsthat Gaelic was an ancestral tongue,not one my ancestors spoke,at least those who hadn’t yetmade the unthinkable moveto Norfolk and the frigid sea. Now I am all of those, and I knowthat…
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PRACTICE THIS
He is, he claims, a practitionerof feng shui, and will, fora nominal fee, arrange our homein the harmony it requires. His fee, of course, is nominalto him only, and hardly onewe would incur with the expensesof a new home, with twoof too many things, and noneof some necessities, whichour local merchants will providefor their own…
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IT’S ABOUT TIME
My first inclination, in factmy strong desire, when he asks mewhat time it is, is not to consultmy watch, but to say that we livein an age of unprecedented uncertainty,an era of division and incivility,and days fraught with risk thateach might be the last. I know he wants to know the hourand the minute, but…
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RUYGE’S ULTIMATE STAGE 鐵笛倒吹 二十八
If you answer the questionI will ask you anothereach more difficult. If you enter a roomand catalog its contentsthere will always be a doorleading to yet another room,another inventory to be takento determine what is thereand what is missing. It is only when you enteran empty room,that you will find all things. A reflection on…
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an old writer and his words 