If you ask your teacher
if the cat
in Schrodinger’s box
his dead,
he will say
the cat is dead .
If you ask your teacher
if the cat
in Schrodinger’s box
is dead,
he will say
the cat is not dead.
Dead and not dead ,
both the same
A reflection on Case 30 of the Book of Equanimity (従容錄, Shōyōroku)
That there is another shooting
comes as no surprise,
it is commonplace now, expected
and there are only questions:
how many this time, what
kind of weapon was used, what
motivated the shooter to do it.
What does it say when we define
mass killing as requiring three
or more dead bodies in one place.
The body of the single victim
is no less dead than the mass killed
but death by gun is so commonplace,
we roll right by it unless we know
the victim or the location holds
special significance to us.
So we have ceded our humanity
to the Almighty Weapon, all
we have are prayers, for we
are now too tired to be angry, and
mass anger is our only hope.
I still marvel at the way
the mind can rewrite
the narrative arc of memories,
taking away sharp edges,
eroding or erasing some
too painful to relive, and
bringing others out
from deep storage, some
largely forgotten, to be
battled with in dreams,
demons wrestled to submission.
In my dreams I have had
a final conversation with
my step-sibling, who
told me of my father’s
death in a text message,
who never delivered my
nominal share of either
parents estate, who made
it clear I did not matter,
and in the dream I
pronounced him
dead to me and buried him
in a place my memory
can and will not visit.
Santayana said, “Only the dead
have seen the end of the war.”
We have grown adept at wars,
no longer global in scope, but
ubiquitous in frequency.
Mine was fought in the rice
paddies of Vietnam, and on the
campus where we struggled
valiantly and vainly to protest,
and when that failed, in the heat
of Texas, marching about, going
thankfully nowhere, shipped
to Niagara Falls when the Air Force
could think of nothing better
to do with the likes of me.
I didn’t die, know several who did
and sadly know Santayana was right
for Bierce said it best, “In international
affairs, a period of cheating
between two periods of fighting.”
The mind can be
a brutal editor, revising
history, rejecting memories
without a substantial rewrite.
My step sister, many years
dead remains five, that
young face engrafted
on the woman ravaged
by unrelenting cancers.
My first wife of 30 years
is mostly faceless, the
mental pictures and dreams
edited until only she
is unrecognizable.
And in moments of reflection
I am no longer adopted,
the step-siblings were,
but they are now
just like family, almost.
When you ask your teacher
what happens when you
stop thinking, allow
no new thoughts
what you expect him
to tell you?
The dead have no thoughts
but that is not the door
to Nirvana.
But if thoughts abandon you
without your effort, without
being asked to do so,
then the door you seek
will open before you.
A reflection on case 19 of the Book of Equanimity 従容錄, Shōyōroku
The face in the mirror this morning
was not mine, perhaps it was
that of my grandparents, all
I never met, having only
old and faded pictures that vaguely
resemble the mirror’s face.
It might be my parents, both
dead before I found them only
yearbook pictures and just possible
a vague similarity to the face
that i see in the mirror each day.
I tried to ask the mirror who
it was hiding in the glass, but
like most mirrors it was silent,
a sad reflection of its ilk, so
the old man peering out will
continue to be someone
that I have never met.
When you ask your teacher
what happens when you
stop thinking, allow
no new thoughts
what you expect him
to tell you?
The dead have no thoughts
but that is not the door
to Nirvana.
But if thoughts abandon you
without your effort, without
being asked to do so,
then the door you seek
will open before you.
A reflection on Case 19 of the Book of Equanimity (従容錄, Shōyōroku)
Pause and consider, if only
for a moment, this question,
which you need not answer
as you will be right and
you will be wrong regardless
of what you say in response.
What if we are the cat in
some Godly thought experiment
and our degradation of the planet
is the bit of radioactive material,
of which we have in profusion.
Are we alive, or are we dead,
or both, until God again
checks in on us, so we must
hope He is too busy creating
other worlds and correcting
the errors he made in this one.
I keep in my pocket
all the treasures of my family,
all of the keepsakes from my mother,
and those from my father
given to me when they died.
I would share them with you,
but they are highly personal
and would not mean much to one
who never knew my parents
or my step brother, the one
with whom I have not spoken
since the text announcing
our father’s death, so I cherish
what I have in my pocket for
nothing was all I hoped for.
an old writer and his words 