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SUMMER, THEN
For three days I was a short order cook a change from my table duties when the regular guy decided that a night of drinking didn’t end when the bar closed and broke back in through the rotting back door that was always next on the list of things to be fixed. The owner, my…
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HANGING BY A THREAD
In Riga, my grandfather was a master tailor, the great and the rich would come to his shop some bringing bolts of fine cloth and others trusting him knowing that wools and silks were not beyond his reach. Even after they marked his home as that of the Jew, the Captain, who rode through the…
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WINTER MEMORY
As I stare out the window and watch the snow slowly build on the limbs of the now barren sugar maple, painting it with a whiteness that bears heavily giving the smaller branches a better view of the ground in which their fruit of the summer lies buried. I am forced to wonder if the…
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WATING GAME
We pull in to the parking lot where our mailboxes are arrayed like so many graves at Arlington, or more like the drawers in a low cost mausoleum. This is the new Postal Service, sharing the burden of the need to cut costs even at the expense of services. Standing nearby are two Sandhill Cranes…
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ISAN’S GIFT 正法眼蔵 語十六
If someone has much, give him little, if someone has little, give him much. If you have much, give much, but if you have little, give only little. Little and much are both the same when given and received. A reflection on Case 56 of the Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)
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MEDITATION
A wise Buddhist teacher once told me that anything you do, if you do it mindfully, can be a form of meditation, and I have taken this into my practice, albeit with mixed success, but that is one reason they call it practice. Walking silently, following your breath in and out, aware of your feet,…
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The spider wandered around the corner of the ceiling and wall of the bathroom, one she called a daddy longlegs, although most spiders of my acquaintance have rather long legs using my proportions as a basis for comparison, and it was my task to deal with it. It was harmless, as are most of his…
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TODAY, ALAS
Too much of what passes for literature in these days is really no more lasting than the evanescent pixels from which it is created. Books fade, pages crumble to dust but that requires the passage of time that our electronic world avoids or simply refuses to acknowledge, for history is something that lives in storage,…
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INSTRUCTIONS
Go into the hills an bring back logs, straight, peel the bark and smooth them satin fibers, the main pole at least eight arms the cross no less than six. Lash them well so they will not yield under the weight of the body where you might hang. Do not speak to the shepherd, he…
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As a young child I recall my mother justifying all manner of disasters based on miscommunication, mostly hers, by saying, “Does Macy’s talk to Bloomingdale’s?” I didn’t care, no one did and the excuse never worked as far as I can tell, and I now know from experience, that of course they talked to each…
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an old writer and his words 