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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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AND UNDER THIS ROCK
There is one thing that noneof the books on discoveringwho you are when you areadopted bother to tell you. If they did, it wouldn’t changeanything, but it is a burdenyou assumed you’d easily bearthat grows heavy with time. What they don’t warn you isthat you will discover yourself,your heritage that was deniedto you for one…
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ON THIS DAY
It is December, and in thispart of Florida that simply meansthat a morning jacket is advised,and rain comes as a bit of a surprise.A neighbour was surprised to be toldthat they decorated like a Northerner,but assumed that it was a bit of a dig,though they thought the inflatable snowmanand reindeer captured the season’s spirit.We laugh…
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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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an old writer and his words 