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IT IS TIME
It is time they said, but they never said what it was time for, although they seem to know. It wasn’t like he was going anywhere, confined to this chair, a quadriplegic. He was the chair really as he had no way of moving it. He had no way of moving anything except by putting…
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SENSO-JI
By hour six, the plane was just a lumbering beast dividing the sky, halfway from God knows where to nowhere special. His body cried for sleep but he knew he had to deny it. That much he had learned from prior trips. For when he landed, made his way painfully slowly into the city, it…
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INJECTION SEAT
Another day, another needle,it is the cost of growing older,I suppose, and does beatthe alternatives, but still,I am growing tired of feelinglike an underappreciated pin cushion. And please, it is not necessaryfor you to smile while pushingthe needle into whateverbody part wins the prizeas that day’s recipient, leaveme to decide whether to smile. And I’m…
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NEEDLE
She tells me I should rest,that I need convalescent time,but I want to tell her, “why,it isn’t like they stuck a needlein my eye, so why rest?” butit actually is just that, but the restof my body is none the worsefor the wear on my face,and it hurts less when Iam doing something otherthan thinking…
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ONE STEP TOO FAR
“As you get older,” he said,“the body grows remarkablyadept at telling you whenyou have done too much,or done something you shouldn’t.” What he didn’t say, the criticalpiece of advice I wish I heard,is that the body only speakswell after the fact, a lecturesurely, but never a warning. No one wants to go a stepshort, to…
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ON THIS NIGHT
On this nighthe walks silentlyinto her dream uninvited,but she is usedto the incursions.On other nights itis she who sidlesup to him in the depthsof dreaming, eachslipping awayahead of dawn.On rare nights eachenters the dreamsof the other, pathscrossing atthe synaptic border.On those nightsshe looks for him,he for her, eachgrows fearfulthe he or shewill be trapped,alone, when…
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ON ARRIVAL
This morning arrivedwith a painful slowness, the slothof irregular dreams refusing to concedeto the light struggling to creep aroundthe blinds that hide the oversize windows. It had been that sort of night,sleep arriving and departing witha frustrating lack of constancy, my bodyuncertain of its proper placement ,the mattress offering no easy solutions. Conceding the failure…
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UNANSWERED
As strange as it seems, I canspend hours in a used bookstorelost in the marginalia, and textbooks, particularly those in psych and sociologyare generally the most fertile,for those students, though they would never admit it, pursued those fieldshoping to find answers to their ownproblems without having to ask. Yesterday’s visit was particularly fertile,but it was…
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SWAN DIVE
Its plump, dusty-white feathered bodysits atop the pond like an invertediceberg, as the lindens fringing the fieldshed their seeds onto the hardened soil.The swan lumbers across the surfacewith no particular urgency or directionslowed by the entropy of a late August afternoon,the laughed shouts of childrenplunging headlong to dinner,diverted to bathroomsfor the cursory sprinklingof unholy water,the…
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ISAN’S SUMMONS 鐵笛倒吹 三十一
When the mastercalls for a novicedo you answer?When the inkinbell is struckdo you beginor end zazen?As you follow your breathwhen do you leaveyour body, and whoreturns when you next inhale? Search insteadfor an answerthat has no question.Who is the novice now? A reflection on case 31 of the Iron Flute Koans
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an old writer and his words 