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DIALOGUE
She says the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that on a cosmic scale space is curved and no one wants the short straw anyway. She can, of course read him, a skill she notes, reserved to women, and one of infinite frustration to…
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NATURE’S VACUUM
Nature abhors a vacuum a fact not lost on God, who spent considerable time filling voids and creating vessels, pots and the odd variety of containers, some quite will suited to their contents and others, man as a shining example, illogical, and worse still, leaky so that once packed with thought and emotion it spends…
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ALBERT AND I
Time folds in on itself, the arrow bends, grows recursive we lapse slowly backward slipping into a protean state. Our universe is neatly bisected, the inner workings laid open showing craftsmanship far beyond our meager comprehension, as we cling to the surface, fear sliding deep into its depth, spiral freely in infinite progression, slowing, approaching…
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PARSINGS
The old monk sits cross legged on a grass mat, a faint smile dances across his lips. He invites me to sit, our meeting, he says, is notable. I sit, legs folded as best I can, and begin to ask but he silences me, “First tea.” He sets the cups down on the hardpack dirt floor, there is…
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AT THE TEMPLE
The Buddhist priest in golden robes rocks gently to and fro, chanting from the prayer cards over the din of the flea market swirling around him, The faithful stand with heads bowed, as the stone Buddha draped in red and gold nods his approval
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BOUNDARY
What is on the other side of this wall that is just too tall to peer over? No one seems to know, though many have surmised it is a completely different world looking little or nothing like the one we inhabit. Last week a young man picked up a ginkgo leaf and said “ahah, it…
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KNOWING
She wants to know if I could be an animal which would I choose. Part of me wants to answer panther – sleek, black, catlike eyes glowing in the night – but never coyote, crawling out of the hills in search of rabbits darting through the sage, never the trickster. I am an animal, I…
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ANGELIC
The Buddha said we could all sit comfortably on the head of a pin in perfect knowledge and you would never see us, but if we danced, our music would deafen you.
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HEAVEN
Joseph said he once met an angel on the bullet train between Osaka and Tokyo. I asked him if her wings were feathered, he said “no, it was her smile” and it was gossamer. Joseph said they spoke only briefly, she through long black hair, in Japanese, he in his only language, English. She was…
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NIGHT PASSING, MORNING REINCARNATE
The Buddha died peacefully in his sleep last night in the Emergency Room of Cook County Hospital, his passing was noted by a surgical resident passing by the partially drawn curtain en route to the Doctor’s Lounge after two hours of meatball surgery on a young man with multiple gunshot wounds who bled out anyway…
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an old writer and his words 