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TIME PASSING
We spend countless time trying to find silence, and when we find it it drives us to distraction. We can lose ourselves in noise as we never can in silence, and being emotionally naked alone is the scariest place this side of death, and we know that death promises only silence eternal.
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SHE SAID
She said that we are little more than clay to be molded by God and carved by fate and we count on nothing more than this day. It’s but a week since she has slipped away, we expect our sense of loss to abate. She said that we were little more than clay, just so…
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FROM BEYOND
My grandmother speaks to me from time to time, in a voice that sounds remarkably like my own, but the dead borrow voices, it is so much easier than exercising their own, and there is so little need for words once they leave. She hasn’t changed all that much, still opinionated, still ready to have…
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FROM THE BEGINNING
Pangu* came by for a visit the other night. He tends to drop by uninvited. “Hate to call ahead,” he says, “it ruins the surprise.” He’s aged a bit since the last visit, and I told him he looked different. “It’s just a look. It’s the same old me, but I tend to scare people. So…
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FERRYMAN
He comes to me in the dead hour of night the old shriveled man poling his poor ferry across the river of my dreams. He comes when the moon has fled and the stars fall mute and he beckons me holding out the copper coins stating his fare. He comes to me, beckoning, and for…
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FEAR
The old monk asked the young man why he seemed so worried. “Because, sensei, you are old and will die soon!” “Why does that worry you?” “Because, like everyone, I fear death.” “Not everyone, certainly, I do not fear death.” “How can you not fear death?” “There is nothing to fear, I fear life.” “Why…
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LETTING GO
Roshi left last week sitting in the garden of the Zen Center, there then not there, as though he let go his 91 year grasp knowing somehow, it was the right moment. He left so quietly those around him did not hear him depart. Half a lifetime ago I sat at his feet, unable to…
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ASHES TO DUST
The dolphin is born of the water, the man born of the fire and of the earth. The dolphin swims unrestrained, the man chooses to live in the city of Afterlife, focussed on impending rebirth. The dolphin stares up in wonder at the amassing clouds, the man curses the sky shielding him from heaven. The dolphin…
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THIRD EYE, NEEDING GLASSES
You ask me what is the first thing I can remember, and seem surprised when I tell you memory is much like a Buddhist river, never the same twice. Memory is a stage and I am one to forget my lines, today it’s the window in the back of a Miami Beach bus amazed at…
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RETURN FROM NINEVAH
Jonah, what color is the sun at dawn? Black as the night preceding it Jonah, what is the odor of spring? That of rotting rincinus Jonah, what shall we say to a crying baby? The gates of Ninevah will be…
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an old writer and his words 