The Problem of Anxiety Fifty years have passed since I started living in those dark towns I was telling you about. Well, not much has changed. I still can’t figure out how to get from the post office to the swings in the park., Apple trees blossom in the cold, not from conviction, and my […]
Month: September 2008
Saints and Ordinary Folks
This is an exquisite truth: Saints and ordinary folks are the same from the start. Inquiring about a difference is like asking to borrow string when you’ve got a good strong rope. Every Dharma is known in the heart. After a rain, the mountain colors intensify. Once you become familiar with the design of fate’s […]
Gender Blues
This presidential campaign year has seen a morphing of many of the gender issues that have circulated in our culture for nearly 40 years. I have watched this play out in the political arena with feelings of anger, amazement, frustration and, most recently, a profound sense of hopelessness. As a topic, gender is still radioactive. […]
- Philosophy
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Sky Dancer
When I was in India in August, I became friends with a wonderful woman. Kristin Brudevold is a graduate of Naropa Institute and a walking resource of all things Buddhist. Our conversations as we trekked through the mountains of Ladakh were very rich and provocative. One of Kristin’s projects before leaving Naropa was to research […]
The Bully Heart
One is One Heart, you bully, you punk, I’m wrecked, I’m shocked stiff. You? you still try to rule the world–though I’ve got you: identified, starving, locked in a cage you will not leave alive, no matter how you hate it, pound its walls, & thrill its corridors with messages. Brute. Spy. I trusted you. […]
Resuming the Boundaries
After Love Afterwards, the compromise. Bodies resume their boundaries. These legs, for instance, mine. Your arms take you back in. Spoons of our fingers, lips admit their ownership. The bedding yawns, a door blows aimlessly ajar and overhead, a plane singsongs coming down. Nothing is changed, except there was a moment when the wolf, the […]
Quiet Revelations
Former US poet laureate Louise Gluck, whose poetry I have posted here many times, just won the coveted Wallace Stevens award. Well deserved. Also awarded: An academy fellowship granted to Brigit Pegeen Kelly, a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. After reading some of her work online, I am adding Kelly to my list. […]
Striking Deep
I have a feeling that my boat has struck, down there in the depths, against a great thing. And nothing happens! Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . . -Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, and am now standing quietly, in my new life? –Juan Ramon Jimenez (translated by Robert Bly) […]
Reality, Redux
Querulous Squirrel did a riff on the Rumi one liner that I posted here yesterday. QS is one of my favorite bloggers, and her explorations and insights are rich, expansive and inspiring. Here’s some worthy reading (and so much more if you go directly to her site): Reality exists. There is no doubt about it. […]