Lekshe's Mistake2

09/02/2004

MOVING this blog

I wanted to be able to easily post photos and a few other things, so I have moved my blog

I'll continue to double post for a week or so. Come visit the new site.

Posted by lekshe at 11:23:00 PM

Sharing a Drink

I have a friend who did a three-year-three-month-three-day, cloistered Buddhist retreat. In fact, many of my closest friends have done that or something like it. Like all unusual activities, these retreats have left some nice stories in their wake. These particular stories are really best told in person. Not sure why. But I thought I might pass along one or two here on the blog.

McVicker

McVicker is a tall man, handsome in the way that any healthy man might be. During his three-year retreat, which is supposed to be focused entirely on mediation practices, he used his break time to build a koi pond. This is remarkable, if you consider how little break time there is on retreat. Practitioners begin their meditation each day at 3 AM, after sleeping sitting up in a wooden box-like structure that has a small shelf in the front, for holding texts and small riutual implements used during practice.

(This "box" is also where much of their meditation practice is done. A retreatant in our tradition does not sleep lying down for the entire duration of the retreat. There are reasons for this, but that is, as they say, another story, and not one that I'll be telling.) Retreatants practice till late in the evening. Breaks are limited to a few short tea and bathroom breaks and a couple of hours in the afternoon and evening. I have also heard that one may take a break on one's birthday--but that almost no one does.

The retreat leader, or drupon, I heard, was not entirely happy about that koi pond. I suspect the cook brought things on his weekly grocery runs and left them in just inside the eight foot fence that enclosed the compound. This probably slowed work down considerably. I have always wondered about the koi--how that happened. Big fish smuggled in soup pots? Fat plastic water-filled bags of orange and black fish carried inside in brown paper Safeway bags? Who knows. One thing is for sure. No one left retreat to get koi, and no one but the cook brought them in. UPS does not deliver, in this case.

McVicker was an anthropologist by trade. Word has it that he was a bug man, too. He had a legendary affection for ants and spiders and beetles and the tiny winged creatures that made homes in his cabin and along the beams and the in cracks of the shrine room.

The way my friend tells it, one late summer afternoon, the monks were gathered in the shrine room to recite a day-long liturgy. They took a break in the middle to wipe the sweat off their foreheads, refill tea cups and shake off the malaise of so much sitting. It was hot. Opening the windows had done nothing to lower temperature or increase cross-ventilation. And the all the men were dressed in the traditional long robes and ten foot long "zens,"shawls that wrap around two or three times and drape over the left shoulder and down to the middle of the back or lower.

Sonam says he was sitting (Sonam rarely gets up on breaks--even now, at 60, he often just sits.) He was staring out the window when he heard McVicker's voice softly, in the background. McVicker was saying, "Yes, yes, it's okay, drink as much as you like. It's so hot today. We're all thirsty."

He turned, thinking to see that McVicker was sharing his water bottle with another monk. Instead, McVicker was sitting stone still, talking to a large yellow jacket that was sitting at the corner of his eye, drinking.

Compassion indeed. Not for the faint-of-heart.

Posted by lekshe at 10:54:00 AM

06/02/2004

Up River, as Usual

I am off in less than an hour to facilitate a retreat just past the Columbia River Gorge, on the Washington side. They say it's snowing. I love this place. The drive up reminds me of Tibet in spring, in places.

Anyway, I'll miss you. Keep each other company....like you did last month, before Lekshe existed. *laughs, packs a felt hat and boots.

With affection, Leks

Posted by lekshe at 12:13:00 PM

One More Thing

Don't be silly.

Who would try to hold the wind
or be held by the sun and yet
no less warm I lie face down
and am born to
the steady world of your
soft steps up the stairs.

i could never have imagined such impatience without hurry.

-- who would not consider
clinging to life
for the soft instant of your kiss?

Posted by lekshe at 12:16:00 AM

05/02/2004

Now to Discover Your Departure

Why won't the apple FALL?

It did for Newton, dammit.
I need a break.
I'm dying and I'm killing people in the process.
Why can't I get this?

It's too late now. No turning back.
No back turning.
We're in this for the long haul and we're stuck.
Stuck like diamonds in old rock,
invisible and waiting a thousand years.

I ache. I ache to be better, to be good, even.
To have as much skill as a potato or a plum.

Do we have a season? Will we ever be ripe?

Am I mad or just tired from holding up the sky?

Nobody told me I would be dumb, over and over. Nobody ever said I never really got smart but just had trick glasses that made it seem like that. X-ray vision. I see, now, and it pokes me. A poking thing. Poking myself. Ouch. Crummy little excuse for understanding.

I want to Get It. I do. But it's like a jar lid. It can't be forced. I has to be warmed up, twisted, banged on the counter just right. Worked up to and leveraged.

Even then, it might not work. Tempting to just smash the jar, isn't it?

I want to see how it is. Not how it might be, or how it used to be--if it ever really was, which now I question.

There's no god in it, if we don't bring god to it. That's clear. Only at times like this, I forget. I look in my bag. It's empty. No god. Where did god go?

It seems small, like a mud puddle in a parking lot on the way to get salt. It's nothing. But then when I look again, the whole sky is in that mud puddle--the whole thing--clouds rolling along and everything. My own face, even, and yours, if you lean over to look, which you can't now.

I'm a little crazy about this. Like a mad woman, looking for her keys, as they dangle in her hand. It's fear, really. Fear that I might do some damage. Fear that something is lost--not like the sun, which is lost and comes back--but gone for good. I am obsessed with small things. Like bento for lunch. Like the inside of your hand along my cheek, over and over. Like the smell of your shirt, a reason to get up.

I might have forgotten these. Dreams fade. But some things I will not forget, ever. Like the flames that engulf me when I think of our connection. Like the unbounded spaciousness of resting in your commitment. Like fruit smoothies. Well, not fruit smoothies, but milk tea and train rides and your socks, all of which I have saved. See how confused it gets? I can't sleep. I conjure your smell on a pillow you've never even seen and recite poetry to an empty room, thinking you'll roll over and say, "Go to sleep, OK?"

I can wish all I want. Up will never be down. Down will never be up. I can no more uncreate my connection to you than a rock can stop falling, mid-air.

I will try today, to just fall. Without effort or wish or intent. Just fall. Smart, like a rock--just fall. Don't catch me. Whatever you do, don't catch me. Funny thing to say to a dead man, "Just fall."

Posted by lekshe at 10:44:00 AM

04/02/2004

Suberatri, Subarna (sweet dreams, golden one)

All night I sit across the river
from the burning ghats on the banks of the Bagmati.
The illusion of you blazes before my awakened eyes--
orange embers in human form,
rolling clouds of thick, black smoke.

We were a tiny point on the endless circle of time.

In the morning sun,
glittering, silver ashes are swept into the water
and float downstream on the slow current.
Some resettle through the murky turquoise
into the bottom sands.
The lighter make their way to India.

How ephemeral, the jewel of your affection.
The wind of your passion a quick storm,
holding aloft my senses.

Now, I grieve unsaid roses,
while the soft, sensual dance of Us awaits rebirth.

A curving silence rises from my heart
and touches your laughter in the ether--

unique loneliness, the width of stars.

Posted by lekshe at 9:42:00 PM

There is a Particular Kind of Woman

More stories? Well..no time to write a real story today, tonio, but here's a thought...

There is a particular kind of woman who's as interested in a decent pair of canvas trousers as she is a nice silk shirt, and she's likely to show up wearing one when some people have it firmly set in their minds that she ought to be wearing the other.

You know the kind of woman I mean, no doubt. You've met her traveling, or had tea with her, or God forbid, are related to one. You might even be one, which in no way will diminish the amount of perplexity you feel for exactly how she got to be the way she is, or why she doesn't appear at all likely to change.

This kind of woman is not about other people's rules and is most often not interested in other people's business. The former sometimes makes her difficult in employment and the later a failure at certain kinds of parties. It will rarely be disputed that some situations, however, do put her in a rather positive light.

She is, for example, quite able to pack for a round-the-world trip on an hour's notice, with only minor grumblings about wrinkles, or some other matter of minor consequence. She has an admirable ability to make do, as they say, and the flexibility to fit in anywhere, anytime--provided it suits her to do so, of course. She is equally at home puzzling through a tangle of jungle vines or through a mob of guests at a cocktail party. While she may be said to be on the edge, she could not quite aptly be described as on the fringe, and certainly doesn't think so herself.

This woman ages well, and it is well that she ages, though faster might be better, according to some. Her value is mostly self-described, though you would be unlikely to find her thus engaged within hearing range of anyone to whom it might matter.

Posted by lekshe at 9:18:00 PM

If They Found God

if they found God in something golden
i'm glad
or in angles singing,
or some impossibly Big Thing,
that's good.

i can't think of anything more God
than this--
your hands, growing thin,
tucked neatly beneath your aging chin.

i love your face and how it changes--
how it is, which is ageless and
full of your silly grins.

i love the ecstasy you write
with hands that feel the light of
ordinary heaven:
-just having done anything right.
-having not wasted something small,
-any harmless act at all--paradise.

Posted by lekshe at 9:00:00 PM

Ask

with shimmering accuracy
the deeds&thoughts of unripe saints collide
in ambiguous embrace.

memory pretends to have known
but actually wanders more or less
in thick darkness.

deep wisdom is a crisp jewel.
exhale the entire perception.
send it out on invisible wings
to join the vivid twilight.

life is an auspicious question mark.
don't kill it.
ask, when you breathe.

Posted by lekshe at 4:04:00 PM

The Lost Post

Saturday, January 17, 2004 - This post was lost and Susurra asked if I could locate it. A friend had, coincidentally copied it to his computer, thinking to read it later, and when I lost the post, he sent it. I am just now getting it reposted. Cheers, Susurra.

The Perfect Cup

I make effort to be mindful. To fill the cup carefully. To pour the amount I think will make you happiest in the end. But sometimes the tea makes its own way, doesn't it? Pours itself from the pot in my hands to the cup in yours. Sometimes it fills to overflowing and runs across the wooden table top and onto the floor and into your lap or out the door.

I am astonished: Where does all this tea come from? Certainly not from the pot, not in the way that we are used to thinking. Who pours? What is poured and for whom?

There's more. Without asking. I have held that full cup, sides and bottom wet, tea running down my wrists and arms, to your lips and said, "Drink." I've done it without your permission.

Without thinking at all, I have poured and been enchanted by the faint smell of jasmine and the clear green liquid with your reflection, lucid and neat, on the surface.

The cup has overflowed then, and it never occurred to me to be sorry or to feel remiss or even embarrassed. I was swimming in tea, or it was swimming in me. Not any tea, but This Tea, this Moment of Pouring, this You, this Me, the euphoric exchange of self and other. You pour delight into me. I pour delight into you. All things are filled in that moment.

Lately, this has transpired only in image. In ephemera and space, not in the Real World of body and substance. Still, I suppose taking responsibility even in that realm is appropriate. So I confess.

I wish to be honest with you. Your face demands it. Your voice.

God forbid I should ever see your hands or your eyes again. They pull honesty out of me like water draws itself up through a towel. Willing or not, it comes. You have a look that uncloses me completely. I think you manifest it without intention or effort. It just appears there--you turn my direction and your face arranges itself into that look, and I open. Just like
*that.

Posted by lekshe at 11:10:00 AM

03/02/2004

Perfidy Allium Sativum (sounds like a spell, doesn't it?)

It's indecorous, I suppose, to refer to someone's site twice in one day, but since I have so little reputation left to protect, I'll just let you know that Carlos has posted his recipe for Garlic Soup on his blog. This, and one more undershirt will get us through the winter.

So it's settled... my house, tomorrow, 6 o'clock. Bring your own allium sativum. I have olive oil-probably in excess of the local legal limit, so slip in the back door if you would. No shouting, "Olive oillll" as you come up the drive.

I own exactly 12 soup bowls, and as many spoons, so first come, first serve. We'll build a fire. There is red wine somewhere in the house.

I was thinking as long as we are posting recipes, it seems fair that we offer something to those who still eat meat, no? It's another simple recipe, with garlic as the main character.

I suppose this is James Beard's recipe, but it came to me from Bug, the kind mother of Palmer, who lived upstairs from me for two years in college. Bug was a cook by affection, and Palmer was her only son. She worked for an airline. The fortunate collision of those three details meant that for the two years Palmer and I shared a house, Styrofoam boxes of food packed on dry ice arrived on a regular basis. Some mothers send cookies. Bug sent espresso mousse and Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic. She also once sent white-on-white hand monnogrammed linen sheets and a 30 foot long windsock.

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

Just do to a whole chicken whatever your family does. Wash it, pat it dry, pray for it, whatever. I suppose you could tie the legs and tuck the wings under, but I have never enjoyed the sight of a small bird in bondage at the table.

Put it in a large pot which can be put in the oven. The pot must have a lid and you must be able to find the lid.

Chop one stalk of celery. Add to the pot. Two is not unreasonable.

Add a little salt, and pepper.

Peel 40 cloves of garlic. Not 40 heads, as my brother first did. 50 is reasonable if it's snowing or you're depressed or have a heart condition. Leave the extra in the kitchen if you suspect you have vampires.

Add water, one cup or so. More if your heart tells you to. A half cup of dry white wine is helpful (in the pot, you may drink as much as you like, of course).

Add a bit of fresh tarragon from the garden. If your herb garden is snowbound, you can use dried. This dish will not fail without tarragon. Nothing will. You could add parsley, rosemary, thyme--all those things. Or not. If you would like to kiss someone who's coming for dinner, add a whole bay leaf. Try to get this leaf into the dish of the person you wish to kiss. This will take work, but of course, a good kiss is worth working for. When they find the leaf, if you've trained your friends, they will say, "He who gets the leaf kisses the cook!" Try to look surprised.

This next step is important. Make a small ball of dough from flour and water. Roll a snake whose length is the circumference of the rim of the pot. Make a fat snake. Not like a cobra, more like a gardener. Now, put the lid on the pot and put the dough-snake where the lid and pot meet. This will seal in the moisture while baking. Cover the snake-seal with tin foil, all the way around. A single layer will do. It might work without this, but you will spend a half hour opening the pot. If you have children, make double dough and let them make snakes while you cook.

Cook this for about one and a half hours at 375 degrees. Cook rice or some like-minded grain while the chicken cooks.

Open the pot. Be mindful of steam. Let the chicken rest for a few minutes. I know this sounds silly--as if he's been working in that pot--but it helps.

Lift the chicken onto a plate. Celebrate his arrival with some garnish for colour. He will be pale. We're used to that in winter here, but if you're not, you can broil him.

Put the garlic in a several small bowls. It will be very soft and can be used, like butter, on bread. Use an earthy loaf, like baguette.

You can serve a small amount of the liquid in the pot with a bit of cooked rice or other grain. A little ladle full over each serving of chicken is nice, too.

This can be served with Grilled Radiccio, which does add drama, but since that usually means a trip to the store in winter, I say forget it. Have a fresh green. But if you must,

2 heads radicchio, quartered
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Posted by lekshe at 8:09:00 PM

Simple and Fine

Demarcation

All lines are fictions.

Fences, borders:
lies.

There's only ever water
in the stream.

1/28/2004

this is from carlos arribas' poetry notebook.

oh yes. simple and so...so...exact.

thanks, carlos, and tonio, for taking me there on his random quote list. whew, nice ride.

i'm posting too much. i know, i know. i have a retreat to prep and i am pacing. yikes.

Posted by lekshe at 12:17:00 PM

An Open Letter to Political Columnist George F. Will of the Washington Post

I don't often poste political stuff here or anywhere else, but this is so eloquent, I thought to make an exception. --Lekshe

An Open Letter to Political Columnist George F. Will of the Washington Post

By The Right Reverend John Shelby Spong, Episcopal Bishop of Newark

Dear George:

You have a huge platform through television, Newsweek and the Washington Post to be a major influence in shaping public opinion. I find myself impressed by your insights into the world of baseball and a bit less impressed by your right-of-center political musings. I am, however, absolutely amazed at the profoundly uninformed positions you have recently offered the public on the questions that are currently the content of ecclesiastical debate in our churches. You seem to have no understanding of what it means to seek to bind together an ancient faith with the insights of our contemporary world.

I appreciate the fact that you are a fellow Episcopalian and, as such, are vitally interested in the issue of the consecration of the Rt. Rev. Eugene Robinson to be the Bishop of New Hampshire. The fact that this event was covered by the media of the world indicates that it was regarded as a significant moment of history, a turning point in the life of the Christian Church. Indeed, I believe it was the enabling vote at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church that allowed this consecration to go forward that opened our church decisively to the full inclusion of homosexual people. It also struck a mighty blow at cultural homophobia. As such it has inaugurated a great consciousness-raising and welcome discussion that has now reached far beyond the boundaries of the Episcopal Church. That is a major accomplishment for a relatively small church.

Yet you, George, in your Washington Post column, have characterized this debate as one that pits the "cultural trendiness" of the Northern Hemisphere nations against the "doctrinal clarity" of the Southern Hemisphere nations. I regard that analysis as breathtakingly naive and suggest that it is revelatory of nothing more than your own deep and abiding prejudice. For you to speak publicly about this issue, when you are as poorly informed as your words reveal you to be, calls either your competence or your integrity, perhaps both, into question. Because you added a gratuitous comment about me by name in your Newsweek column (November 10, 2003), I think it appropriate that I respond to you in an equally public way.

You pose the issues of this debate as between modernism in religion and the true faith of antiquity. You suggest that two thousand years of Church teaching about sexuality and family are being imaginatively construed in "a certain interpretive trajectory." You quote approvingly a Fairfax, Virginia, Episcopal priest who, referring to the debate at the National Episcopal General Convention last summer, said, "When the plain teaching of the Bible was referenced, eyes rolled, and with expressions of polite exasperation, we were told that it was time to move on. The Bible simply had not kept up." You appear to be saying that those who quote the Bible, as if it provides the last word on moral issues, are to be commended.

Well, George, perhaps you need to understand why it is that people who quote the Bible to under gird their own inability to embrace reality might need to be enlightened.

The Bible was quoted to support the divine right of Kings when the Magna Carta made its appearance in 1215. History has demonstrated that the Bible was wrong on that issue and today no king rules on this planet by divine right. People have embraced democracy. You might think that represents "cultural trendiness," but I believe it represents an emerging consciousness that the writers of the Bible, bound to their time in history, could never have contemplated.

In the 17th century the Church, acting out of what you call "doctrinal clarity," imprisoned Galileo and almost executed him because his study of the motion of "heavenly bodies" led him to the conclusion that the earth was not the center of the universe and that indeed the earth rotated around the sun. The "fathers of the Church" in their attack on Galileo quoted a verse from the book of Joshua, in which the sun was made to stand still in the sky to enable Joshua to kill more of his enemies, as sure proof that the sun rotated around the earth. I think eyes should roll in a space age when this "clear teaching of the Bible" is referenced.

In the 19th century, Charles Darwin challenged the "clear teaching of the Bible" in the story of creation. But no matter how many passages of scripture have been quoted since The Origin of Species was published in 1859, our modern world is quite sure that it is Darwin rather than the Bible that is closer to the truth. That is unless you now want to regard DNA evidence as a bit more of your "cultural trendiness."

We could go on and show how "doctrinal clarity" led the Church to participate in, and to justify with biblical quotations, the institution of slavery as well as slavery's two bastard stepchildren, segregation and apartheid. Are you not aware that even the popes in history have been slaveholders? Is our present integrated society, which has opened the door to people like Colin Powell to serve in an office that was previously denied to any African-American, just another example of "cultural trendiness?" Women in this country were certainly treated up until relatively modern times with what you call "doctrinal clarity." The Ten Commandments defined the woman as property that, along with the ox and the ass, was not to be coveted. With full biblical encouragement, the Church in the Middle Ages regarded women as anything but equal, and even today the Southern Baptist Church, has directed women to be subject to their husbands. The word "obey" required of the woman alone, was not taken out of the Episcopal marriage ceremony until 1928. Women could not enter our universities in any significant numbers before the 20th century. Women did not receive the power of the vote in the United States until 1920 and even that was accomplished against the opposition of the Bible quoters. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1876 that a woman could not practice law in the State of Illinois because "God has designed her for the more domestic role." Is that what you are now calling "progressive cultural aggression" which you suggest is challenging "the conservatism of institutions?" I consider it a step into enlightenment.

Shall we examine the way children were employed in the sweatshops of the 19th century or abused in the boarding schools of England with official church sanctions until Charles Dickens began to raise the secular consciousness of his nation?

You note approvingly in your column, that when dissident Episcopalians met recently in the town of Plano, Texas to nurse the wounds of their defeat at the General Convention, that they received a letter of support from the Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger. Would you have our church in this 21st century approve the incredible negativity that emanates from the Roman Catholic Church about women? Do you think that this Church, which has spawned a veritable culture of abuse and cover up, is qualified to lecture anyone on issues of either morality or "doctrinal clarity?"

You see, George, the battle over the full acceptance of homosexual people in both Church and society is like all of these other movements. It pits an old and dying definition, supported by appeals to scripture, against an emerging new consciousness. Slavery was sustained as long as African people could be defined as subhuman, childlike and without sufficient intelligence to be full citizens of this land. Slavery and segregation collapsed when that definition was mortally wounded by a new consciousness informed by new data. Are you suggesting that this was the result of "cultural trendiness?"

The same thing happened in the feminist movement. The breaking of the traditional female stereotype began when women challenged the male-imposed definition of what it means to be a woman. Women insisted on the right to define themselves. This new definition led women not only into education and the workplace but also into positions in the cabinet of the President of the United States in 1933, and into the House of Representatives, the Senate, the governors' mansions and the Supreme Court as the 20th century unfolded. Certainly we will elect our first woman president in this century. This is not "cultural trendiness," George, this is the direct result of a new consciousness that neither you nor anyone else will ever turn around.

The battle for the full inclusion of homosexual persons in both the Church and the social order is the result of a similar new consciousness attacking an old and inadequate definition. Homosexual people were once defined, with biblical under girding, as sinful people. It was assumed by this negative definition that gay and lesbian people either chose to be homosexual, as an act of moral depravity, or that they were mentally ill and could not help themselves. That definition has simply been rendered inoperative by new knowledge. Most educated people today accept the fact that sexual orientation, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is something over which people have no control. Human beings simply awaken to it, they do not choose it. Homosexual orientation is also now generally recognized as consisting of a stable percentage of the population at all times and in all places. This means that it cannot be externally caused as assumed by the old definition. The scientifically documented presence of homosexuality in the animal kingdom argues against it being classified as "unnatural," unless you attribute to animals the ability to make moral choices. These are the factors that have created the emerging new consensus, and if they are correct, as more and more scholars now believe, then homosexuality must be seen as being in the same category as race, gender or even left-handedness. They are the "givens" not the choices of the individuals. To discriminate against a person on the basis of something the person is must be seen as nothing more than prejudicial ignorance that leads to the willful destruction of another's humanity. That makes it an overt act of bigotry. To quote the Bible to render bigotry acceptable is neither new nor is it any more convincing in this situation than it has been when used earlier in our history to justify other evils.

For you to suggest further that nations of the Third World, where such things as polygamy, female circumcision and second class status for women are still widely practiced, ought to be listened to and respected when they speak out of the context of a discredited and dying definition of homosexuality is bizarre. What our church has done, George, is nothing less than to challenge the ignorance and prejudice that has allowed people like you and me to participate in the oppression of countless numbers of people throughout history, whose only "sin" was that they were born with a sexual orientation different from the majority.

Our Church has done an audacious thing. We will not now tremble at our own audacity. This is rather a cause for rejoicing that another in a long list of human prejudices has begun to fall. The fact that we have justified our destructive behavior in the past with quotations from the Bible does not excuse our negativity. This is not "cultural trendiness," George, nor is it a denial of "doctrinal clarity." Maybe it is time for you to examine these issues more thoroughly before you place your uninformed biases into the public arena.

-- John Shelby Spong

Posted by lekshe at 10:58:00 AM

02/02/2004

Remembering Summer

It's 3:30 AM.

I know because I hear the long ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip of Gyaltsen's polar fleece jacket on the other side of the thin plywood wall in cabin number 4. He's going to walk up the trail to the kitchen and fire up the propane stove. He's going to make tea. Probably Celestial Seasonings "Fast Lane," a super-caffeinated blend. Then, by lantern light, he's going to fill the bottom of an old mug with fireweed honey. Doesn't he feel guilty, all that honey?

He won't shower, not now. Nobody in their right mind would shower at 3:30 AM. Besides, he showered yesterday at that time.

I can't sleep now. Before he's opened his door, I'm out of my cabin, pulling a black cotton hipari jacket over my jubon. It's cold. My hakama strings are loose. I'll fix them later. I have black clogs with no socks. Now, all I can think of is getting up to the kitchen to light the lantern and start the stove.

The water barely comes from the tap at this time of day. Filling the tea kettle takes forever. I am shaking in the cold. I hear Gyaltsen coming up the trail. The madrone leaves crackle under his sneakers. Even the deer make noise in those leaves.

The kitchen door creaks when he opens it. It slams shut. I jump. He takes a cup from the shelf. How does he recognize his cup in the dark? We stand and admire the warmth from the propane stove, which makes a friendly hissing sound.

Finally the water begins to boil. A mouse skitters across the floor and into the pantry. Smart little guy, working the night shift.

Gyaltsen uses so much honey. Always like that, holding the plastic bear a full foot above the cup and watching the honey fall. I am sleepy. I am ready for tea. I don't use honey. Well, not as much as he does. I am fascinated by the way the honey captures the light from the lantern.

We fill our cups and walk down the slippery trail to cabin number 4. We have not spoken. His door is on the left. Mine is on the right. We close the doors carefully, without making a sound.

I sit the cup on the floor and light a candle on the shrine. The matches are damp. The shrine is a small piece of plywood on an old army trunk. I have covered it with silk. It looks pretty good in the dark. I pull the curtain aside. The moon hangs patiently over the water, a thousand feet below. It shimmers on the surface of the water as a little wind picks up.

I prostrate three times. The carpet is musty and the floor is cold. I take my seat on the cushion filled with buckwheat. I run my hand over my shaved head. The hair is beginning to grow back. It feels good to touch it.

I take a breath. I remember all the teachers, people like me who did this before me. I remember the possibility of being whole and awake to my life. I remember how lucky I am to do this. I say thanks.

I take a breath. I stop. I can hear my heart beat. I can see my breath. I want to go back to bed. It's cold.

The moon spills over the window sill onto the shrine. The crystal beads in my hands glow as if they are full of light. I make the aspiration to be clear. Free from confusion. I slide one bead to the right. I will do this one hundred and eight times.

A large black spider walks across my text. He takes his time. Is he reading? Does he hear the soft click, click, click of the beads? Does he feel the wind of my breath above him?

When the last bead is done, I stand. I take a breath. I remember everyone who is looking for happiness. Those who find it and those who don't. I wish them better luck. I remember everything I have done to stand in their way. I wish myself better luck.

I slide down onto the floor in a full prostration. It hurts. The little cabin shakes on its rickety foundation. I stand up. I remember my body, my speech and my mind. I prostrate again. I will do this one thousand and eighty times. Gyaltsen will do more. By noon there will be a small abrasion on my forehead. Seeing it in the mirror will make me laugh. Head banging. I will find a Spiderman band-aid.

Later I will sit, just resting. I will lean against the oldest madrone tree and feel the warm wind rise up off the water and blow though the cabin. The prayer flags will be shorter and more tattered every day. They will fade.

Finally I will sit again in the dark. I will put out the candle with a wave of my hand. I will not use my breath to extinguish the light. I'll hang the jacket, the hakama and the jubon on the peg by the door. I'll bring the clogs inside. I'll slip into my sleeping bag. I'll wish I'd done better somehow.

Soon, I'll hear the long ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip of Gylatsen's polar fleece jacket on the other side of the thin plywood wall in cabin number 4. He's going to walk up the trail to the kitchen and fire up the propane stove. He's going to make tea. Probably Celestial Seasonings "Fast Lane," a super-caffeinated blend. Then, by lantern light, he's going to fill the bottom of an old mug with fireweed honey. Doesn't he feel guilty, all that honey? It's 3:30 AM.

Posted by lekshe at 11:11:00 PM

Invisible Ink

so many things I will say now
because when I remember your voice,
the sky opens and
fluent turbulence chases fleet images
(death to details
but the texture reads like well-formed braille
beneath curious fingertips)

I will say things,
brave things without hiding:
I do not fear life's delight
nor am I afraid to die blissfully alive,
wings open.

I might speak like this
but really I would like a small resting place
in the fragile palace of your affection
if there is room, if you want.

I am tugging at gently remembering what it means to
be balanced upon the opening of a story
contrary to popular belief.
a heart is a voice if anyone listens
but the world is poised to be closed and deaf.

the little feet of prayer
making tracks of wishes
fall victim to the light of day.
it was just a dream, after all, then,
a thin wraith waving in the wind,
wistful and suspect.

Posted by lekshe at 12:00:00 AM

31/01/2004

Almost Every Day

"Are You Mr. William Stafford?"

"Are you Mr. William Stafford?"
"Yes, but. . ."

Well, it was yesterday.
Sunlight used to follow my hand.
And that's when the strange siren-like sound flooded
over the horizon and rushed through the streets of our town.
That's when sunlight came from behind
a rock and began to follow my hand.

"It's for the best," my mother said, "Nothing can
ever be wrong for anyone truly good."
So later the sun settled back and the sound
faded and was gone. All along the streets every
house waited, white, blue, gray; trees
were still trying to arch as far as they could.

You can't tell when strange things with meaning
will happen. I'm [still] here writing it down
just the way it was. "You don't have to
prove anything," my mother said. "Just be ready
for what God sends." I listened and put my hand
out in the sun again. It was all easy.

Well, it was yesterday. And the sun came,
Why
It came.

--William Stafford
written on the day of this death

Though William Stafford was once the poet laureate of my home state, I don't know too much about him except that he usually wrote a poem a day. I admire that.

I've noticed something, too. When I get tired, I like to read Stafford's work and have soup. It has the comfort of a an old sweatshirt, wool socks and my Red Wing boots. It doesn't make me restless like the poetry on Tonio's page, or make me breathless, like Rumi's work. But it calms me down. It makes me remember where I'm from and why it is I probably prefer toast over croissants.

When it's raining (the kind of rain Dale described today on his site) I like to leave the classroom at lunch time and sit in my car under the old catalpa tree out next to the fire hydrant and read. I like the sound of the rain on the roof and I like the steam that gathers on the windows. Before long, the car is private and I get a break from the Inquiring Minds I came to teach. I love teaching. I love those Inquiring Minds. But I also love a wide-mouth thermos of vegetable soup and a green bell pepper, sliced. And I love to read just two or three Stafford poems before I throw the dog-eared book onto the dash and trudge back up to the second story of BPJ building, where the Inquiring Minds are drinking Starbucks, eating dried mangos and tapping their Doc Martins on the hundred year old oak floor.

Here's another of Stafford's works. I did not sift through to find a "good one." Stafford's poems are all good--like the slam of the screen door on the house where you born is good. You wouldn't dream of fixing it, and sometimes you open it again just to hear it close.

You will walk toward the mirror,
closer and closer, then flow
into the glass. You will disappear
some day like that, being
more real, more true, at the last.

You learn what you are, but slowly,
a baby, a boy, a man,
a self often shattered, and pieces
put together again till the end:
you halt, the glass opens.

A surface, an image, a past.

Gray Wolf Press said, "Born in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1914, William Stafford was one of our most prolific and celebrated poets. He was a witness for peace, and for honesty, recognizing in his writing that "justice will take us millions of intricate moves."

Posted by lekshe at 8:35:00 PM

30/01/2004

More Postzegels

I wrote just a bit about the stamps I'm making. and Susurra was kind enough to send along this cool link to a site where you can use your own image to create a sheet of postage stamps.

The image you use has to be 255K or less. There's a gallery to browse, too.

Of course, you'll have to add "real" postage to the envelope. But if you don't have time to watercolour a set like mine, by all means don't let that stop you from having and using original postzegels. Why should the post office have all the fun? If you do watercolour your own, you can colour photocopy them onto a sheet of sticky back paper.

Posted by lekshe at 9:00:00 PM

27/01/2004

Real Chai

Stop...don't buy a "box" of chai. There's no such thing. Ack!!

Next trip to the supermarket, I am going to put the entire shelf full of chai mix (mix?) in aseptic cartons into a shopping cart and send it rolling down F-- street. Peh!

Here is the Nepali recipe for chai. It's quite different than Kashmiri chai, (good for colds) or that made in India (especially that which is served in little clay cups which are thrown on the ground after use--dust to dust). No shortcuts, but it's worth it. It's best with waterbuffalo milk, but if you haven't got a waterbuffalo (slaughtered it for Dasign, did you?), use cow's milk. Praise Laxmi.

Put equal parts milk and water in a pan. Add a few crushed cardamom pods, whole cloves and cinnamon (crushed bark is nice, but powdered will do) and a few slices of fresh ginger, peeled or not. The more ginger, the more bite the chai will have. Don't be a snob about the spices, just use what you have.

At some point along here, you could add sugar. I often drink it without, but this is thought to be lacking spirit in the Nepalese view...Definitely not the sort of thing you'd offer company. For god's sake, don't use honey. Let yourself go. Cheap white sugar.

Now bring the half milk-half water (with spices) mixture to just short of boil. Stir it every so often.

When this mixture is hot, add some tea. Keep the heat up. I like a mixture of Assam (which is granular) and a good Darjeeling. Truth is, it's a waste of good Darjeeling. The cheapest tea (even dust tea) works fine. Too much tea will leave a bitter, tannic taste. Too little will make a good kids' drink.

Now, let this mixture boil up to the brim of the pot (assuming you are using a small saucepan). Blow on it. It will calm back down. Let it boil up again. Two or three times should do it.

Stir one last time. Pour the lot through a tea strainer into mugs, at least one of which should be chipped, unless you are serving the Queen. I cheat and fish out the ginger and put it in my cup. (I pre-heat the cups on cold mornings...a fetish, I confess, but in Nepal it was sometimes so cold that the water would freeze in the cups after rinsing and half the point of morning tea was to hold the hot cup.)

This is not called "chai" in Nepali. Or at least not outside the city and not until recently. It's called "tea." The Nepali word is "chia," (tea) or "dudh chia" (milk tea). This is the drink that woke up Siddhartha.

(note for children: I am the only person ever to reside in Nepal and outside the British embassy compound who thought that slurping chai was mannerless. Slurp if you must. Most people do.)

Cheers.

Posted by lekshe at 9:29:00 AM

26/01/2004

The Little Birth

A shadow from the left.

My brain hesitates
apraxia blooms
your face becomes a faint nebula
empyream sphere
catapulted into the shadow
(danger is near) but I cannot run.

I am inclined to death or
death is inclined to me.
sight falters, light quivers,
particles disintegrate.
anoxic disturbance
kindles gasping utterance--
poems take birth in the dirt.

The present languishes.
i am captive to here,
frozen in somatic prison
electric worlds moving under my skin
not by wish or decision
--many people watching but no one is near.

Dysphasic voice tattles
my stammering song
mercifully uncoded, the lyrics are wrong
in this anguished sonnet of the deaf and the dumb.

My life between deaths is fine
no excuses made for
idiopathically divine
cycle of tiny births--
angelic senses intractably opened
by god's hand, some say unkind,
I live and die in the space of this mind.

Posted by lekshe at 9:35:00 PM

Making a Watercolour Stamp: choosing the country

Someone asked here, "How do you make those watercolor stamps?" Well...

First, some research so I may create the country. In looking for information, today, I ran across this, from a cooking site, where a cooking method has been translated into English:

This entrement is of origin Italian is fluid and consistent cream wine-based, sugar and egg-yolk. One will find it presented out of cut, out of glass... Also, sometimes one is used it frozen after a passage after the negative cold. The basic proportions are appreciably the same ones.

And in another recipe:

The inhabitant of Beran sauce, is useful more tepid than hot, it is preferable to make with more meadows of the service.... But one can also leave the ultra classiques precepts, while employing tested method of the Dutchwoman who refuses to miss and apply this adventure with the Sauce Inhabitant of Beran introduced here.

I want to make this sauce. I want to make it employing the tested method of the Dutchwoman who refuses to miss and apply this adventure. Why didn't I know about that earlier? Why must I discover it so late?

By circuitous route, I have discovered the name of the country--Mostaza.

Posted by lekshe at 7:39:00 PM

25/01/2004

Windamere Hotel, Darjeeling - 2003

It was a long morning rummaging for books in the bazaar and I have had it with Indian tailors. Dragging myself up the paved drive to the Windamere, I mumble impatiently to the chowkidhar and drop into a painted chair on the patio. It's not hot, but I'm sweating.

Then, silently, swiftly and with a kind of elegance that I will never achieve, a tall, white-coated Indian man brings a tray with silver tea service. Without a sound, he lowers a porcelain cup and saucer to the table. The cup is painted with violets and trimmed in gold.

He does not ask, "Would you like tea, Memsahib?" He just knows. Like God, he reads my mind or maybe I look even worse than I feel.

He knows, and he's right--tea is the Great Repairer All Things Broken. He pours exactly one cup (not too little, not too full) of FTGFOP First Flush Pussimbing. The tea falls in a musical arc and is pale against the white of the china. He spills not a drop on the saucer.

He adds scalded cream. It makes a tiny vortex into which every bad thing that ever happened, or ever could, is drowned. He looks me in the eye, but only briefly, and asks from beneath a magnificent black mustache, "Sugar, Madame?" I say, "Yes." But he knows. By the time I have replied, he has deftly lifted a single glittering cube from the bowl and it falls, making the smallest display on the surface of the tea. He stirs with a delicate, monogrammed spoon, which coincidentally, I suppose, bears my initial.

He places a napkin nearby and disappears, gliding--not walking--away. I am in love.

I am in love with India, and with tea and with all the dark, somber men who hover and please. I am in love with the crumbled empire of the raj, tattered now, and with the breeze that wafts up from the valley below. I am in love with the courtyard of paved stones and the columns that hold up the breezeway that protects us from late monsoon storms.

I am in love with leisure and with taking time. I am in love with the arrogant young men who type bad manuscripts here--but I prefer the dusty old cranks whom I recognize by the brands of their fountain pens and the brims of their hats. I am in love with unheated rooms with bad English beds and oriental rugs worn thin before I was born. I am in love with the pale Hemidactylus Garnoti, tiny geckos that cling to the walls.

I am in love with lunch, which is two full meals. The first is Indian--well polished silver dishes with polite mounds of steamed Basmati rice and small followings of curried whatever is fresh. Then there is English food, which I do not love, for those whose stomachs cannot fathom one more chili.

I am in love with the spry Tibetan woman who owns this place. She is 94 and was the sprightly and politically unpopular bride of a British tradesman who knew the love of his life when he saw her.

She comes to each meal, properly attired in dresses and hats and gloves and heels, modestly bejewelled and always surrounded by friends. She uses a cane. She is graceful, but firm.

The wind up phonograph plays the same music it played in 1920, I feel sure. The records are handled with gloves. We should dance. Maybe later we will.

After lunch, I think I will never be able to eat again-- I am so full--and everyone at the table agrees: We are done for this life. We leave for walks and our various adventures. Some people nap.

But mid-afternoon, high tea calls and we come. We gather in the drawing rooms and a small, dark man brings a coal bucket and lights a fire. Two smiling women (they are Nepalese, not Indian) in maids' uniforms bring trays of sandwiches and sweets. The tea is self-serve, laid out on the mahogany buffet. The furniture is worn and rickety and the room is slightly cold till the conversation gets going.

We talk, each trying to outdo the other with our stories. A couple is biking from one day north, winding down through teak forests to the awful destination of Silliguri. The gentleman had a flat today and was delayed.

A pale young beauty in a lavender silk skirt and peach coloured stockings is leaving on the toy train tomorrow. Two young men inquire where they might get tickets. The elder here slump back on faded settees with the comfortable demeanor of age. They talk of books, and plays and pensions. They argue over marmalade brands. They have been here before.

Conversation dies out as the coal fire dies down and we all amble off to our rooms. The girl in the lavender skirt has offered to show a photographer something in her suitcase. He's accepted.

I gather my satchel and shawl and the book passed along by an Italian fellow who says he's from Denmark. We stop at the hat rack to get his pack and agree to meet for tea in the morning.

I love India. I say prayers for the small, dark hands that gather the tea at Pussimbing. I get my flashlight and saunter down the valley behind Observatory Hill, where I will sit till the sun sets. Small fires will line the paths back up, and connecting the dots, I'll return.

Established in the 19th century as a cozy boarding house for bachelor English and Scottish tea planters, the Windamere on Observatory Hill in Darjeeling was converted into a hotel just before the Second World War.

Posted by lekshe at 8:23:00 PM

More and Better Evans Stamps

Here are near-lifesize photos of Donald Evans' stamps. Scroll down a bit to find them.

Posted by lekshe at 4:00:00 PM

24/01/2004

Postzegels

A friend reminded me this week that I spent a good number of years making stamps. Not real stamps, of course, but miniature watercolour paintings. This was painstaking work. I first imagined a country, its currency and its people. The stamps were then done in pencil and finished in either watercolour, or in some cases, technical pen. I then hand carved rubber stamps for making cancellation marks. The cancelled stamps were affixed to post cards from flea markets and bookstores and sent to friends.

I was living in a one-car garage at the time (with one other person) so all my painting had to be done at my studio, a small warehouse space I rented for $10 a month. Since the space there was 10 x 10, I did mostly small scale works, including the stamps and later, a series of faked documents. Most of the documents were sold or given away. All of the stamps have disappeared, I think.

The stamps were inspired by the work of watercolour artist, Donald Evans, whose story is described in a wonderful book, The World of Donald Evans, by Willy Eisenhard. The book was made in 1980 and printed by Harlin Quist Books in New York. The book describes Evans' work and his life, which ended at age 31 in a fire in Amsterdam.

Evans was born in Morristown, New Jersey, and began painting stamps when he was ten. In five years, he had made a thousand stamps. According to Eisenhard, "He invented fifty countries to issue them...Each had its own flag and coat of arms, currency and government and rulers. Geographies and histories were intertwined with protectorates and occupations, and unions and federations." Evans cataloged his work meticulously in a three volume work entitled World Wide Stamp Album, arranged alphabetically by country.

Evans eventually abandoned this boyhood pastime. In 1969 he graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture. In 1971, he started painting again. This work continued until his death.

My delight in Evan's work was not only for the fanatical way he cataloged each issue, but also for the secret meanings in stamps. He hid friends' initials in borders and the issue dates or currencies often referenced personal events. He used words from many languages as the base language for stamps. For one set, "Katibo," his architect friend, Lucien Lafour, taught him the word in Surinamese dialect. It meant "black people who had set themselves free." Evans painted tiny portraits of les Katiboises, in three series of seven stamps each.

Many other issues had Dutch words, often in play of meaning, like the Nadorp set. In colloquial Dutch, nadorp means "after the village," or on the other side of town. It was also the last name of a friend of Evans, whom he named the ruler of this small country. The Nadorp set includes a series of vegetables, windmills, birds' eggs, apples and musical instruments, to name only a few.

The other thing I liked about Evans' work, and about my own stamp painting, was that it took one brush (a number two Grumbacher), a few pencils, a pen, eraser and a small sheet of Strathmore paper. An entire year's work, unframed, fit in a small envelope.

I moved last summer into a small 1922 bungalow. It's a delightful house with small spaces and I think I will celebrate now with a new stamp. We'll see if my digital camera can capture it for you.

In the meantime, you can see some of Evans' stamps on this site, as well as read a wonderful accounting of his work by the fellows at 2blowhards, where "two graying eternal amateurs discuss their passions, interests and obsessions..." Gotta love that. You can also see Evans' work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, where the format is a bit small for the resolution.

I am delighted if you have not seen this work and discover it now.

Posted by lekshe at 9:38:00 PM

Demise of the Abattoir

You lean to kiss but I protest.
Your hands gesture a polite difference of opinion.

I want those hands.

Look out the window.
See how the moon sits in the black sky with such composure?
I want to lean against you like that--
dumbstruck and luminous, pressed flatly into your stillness.

You lift the hem of my sweater,
as a question.
I step back.
Not now. Not yet.

Your left hand
signs a word on my skin,
the right translates.

You are not in hurry.
(Your eyes are.
Your sex is.)
You move now with the
sticky slowness of an opium dream.

This is what I need.

From the corner of my eye I see
everything that moves
or ever has moved.
Like the tattered drivel of a penny dreadful
memories riposte
and I recoil.

This will tire you.
It tires me.

I feel dizzy.
You say you will catch me this time.

As if waking from a dream you whisper,
(One hand on the kettle, one on me)
"Peppermint, right?"
Some old wound is mended by this kindness.
I push the chipped cup in your direction.
You pour, deliberately steamy and slow.

Posted by lekshe at 3:50:00 PM

20/01/2004

Shame and Disgrace

Stop.
If we keep talking about love
twilight will pass
candles will cast bewildered light on every surface.
Mystery will slip away.
I'll forget why we came here.
Quick! You know how life is.

The one rule is this:
never ask out loud.
(give dessert, wine...
all those hints)
Then, risk everything
for a kiss,
your legs trembling between mine.
Your indulgence is an act of mercy,
be a saint.

Forget repenting,
when I have your fingers in my mouth
the choices are shame and disgrace--
take your pick.

In the morning my shadow tells me
what I am supposed to become
(the way the sun climbs the wall and
forms disappear
into the buttermilk paint)
Tomorrow a stranger will arrive.
You can do this again and again.

Don't bother explaining,
I'm listening to god while you talk.

Posted by lekshe at 4:28:00 PM

Hydromedusa

timid medusa,
hesitant, surd speech uttered in gelatinous darkness
languidly rising through eremitic silence leaves
limpid bubbles in your wake, untraceable comment dissolving.

precisely mapped at creation:
undulous tendrils set in transient oscillation
your seraphic touch, incapable of embrace
a wary movement of habit, not choice.

your electric body ephemeral,
fragile muse,
holds not one secret
(all can see, who care to look,
your heart, your lungs, the tiny mechanisms of life
as you know it).

stay where you are, frilled Calliope,
the sun calls you,
but to death.
remain suspended in saline dream.
fear the isolate shore that murmurs your name.
swim and be glad for the soft abyss of the hydrosphere
where tears are life.

Posted by lekshe at 11:25:00 AM

19/01/2004

Eccentric Code

in fitful sleep you murmured eccentric code

in the hoarse voice of your reluctant existence

& there in suspended dream I saw

the angry angel past

washing your wounds with blood

mercifully waking at last

you screamed.

(the name I heard was mine)

you will say

(into the wind, after I leave) that

the mere suggestion of communion

required a sacrifice to brilliant gods &

lost children

(mumbling, "love was uncalled for, unbidden")

you couldn't get up and you were afraid. I saw

and I stayed. It wasn't your fault, it was mine.

a saint's conscience is a clean place

but my body keeps dark secrets & I

trade the only thing

left to save my life--

(willingness to die)

so you can sleep.

but sad, & suspicious of pleasure,

you turn

(faithful, as always)

to grief.

Virtue? No.

I have only wishes and

dead sense.

time is short and I know it.

mending perfection

was never my strong point.

let God's name be

but keep it quiet.

Posted by lekshe at 11:03:00 PM

I Want Quiet

I am the Queen of Noisy Things and I miss quiet.

The last time I heard deep quiet was in New Brunswick, in the parking lot of the Ice Crystal Palace Hotel, at 2 a.m. in the morning. A whole flock of gulls raised itself from the dim field of white into the night sky in a single, swift calligraphic motion, utterly silent. They disappeared into the black and I stood, shivering, in the simple absence of sound. That was quiet.

I remember, too, though more dimly than before, how quiet it can be in a snow cave, three feet dug in, the whole thing glowing from two or three candles lit on little shelves carved into the walls. Whispering because the sound magnifies itself. I know that kind of quiet.

I know the clear, blue quiet of a crevasse, heard dangling from a Perlon rope fifteen feet below the glacier's surface where a wind howls and stirs up snowy dervishes and ice daggers. I know how a silent chill runs up your spine when the glacier moves and a twisted creak or groan echoes in the narrow opening between one side of the crevasse and the other. You are reminded of how small you are...a crumb on the ice. How the whole thing could close and swallow you up easily. In that quiet, you can hear your own heart pound, hear your breath rattling from the constriction of the chest harness. This is an alert, alive quiet. A seductive, mysterious quiet. I will risk frost bite to hear it.

I know the quiet of sitting. The wide-open quiet of a tiny sliver of space between the rush of thoughts. The rest, on the out-breath. The pause which anticipates nothing, not even its own end. I know this quiet, but am surprised by how little I know it, after ten years of sitting to listen.

I know the quiet of a job's end, the last paper piled on a precarious stack of "done" things. The realization that you're finished--for now, at least. The blessed relief of having reached the bottom of the merciless to do list.

I know the quiet of finally turning out the lights and sinking into bed, exhausted. Of a plane of weary red-eye travelers catching a wink between landings. Of having finished a class well-taught. Zipping shut the briefcase, the flick of the light switch and the soft swish of the last security door swinging shut. Whooooosh.

I know the quiet, but only through vague memory now, of having made love to someone you so cared to please, and having felt you did. The quiet of feeling welcome to have your leg or arm nestled against the familiar landscape of their form. A sweet, deep quite, whose texture I miss too deeply for something I only so faintly recall.

I miss the quiet.

Posted by lekshe at 2:12:00 PM

Saints and Suffering

As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring suffering by our very contact with one another. Because this love is a resetting of a Body of broken bones.

--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, copyright 1961, by the Abbey of Gethsemani, Inc.

Posted by lekshe at 1:37:00 PM

15/01/2004

Absent minded

Part of me is defined by your absence...an empty place in the shape of you.

I still find myself holding up my experience for your assessment. I am left to ponder questions which are yours, I suppose. Having answered them, I speak, sometimes, meaning to tell you, and then I remember. You're gone. Then the shape of the you resident in me organizes itself more specifically.

So, your existence is not defined by your physical presence. That much I know now. Is my existence defined by mine? Am I there, wherever you are? If I am, is there some thin space in between where we are not? Or do we fill the gap of everywhere at once? If we do, why do I feel so here? Are you allowed to talk, to send a sign or a message? Couldn't you just leave a sock on the floor beside the bed like you did before? Say something funny. Make me laugh.

Not here, not gone. What's breathless about that? Why does it make my pulse race?

Posted by lekshe at 10:02:00 PM

A note from my old friend, bf, who lost his wife this year, and takes a daily walk as part of the 'mend:'

There is, of course, a certain point at which you naturally turn, the outbound finished, your attention on the return, or the "going back," we could say. There could even have been a hiatus between the two, with a flood of images about youth and promise and even a perky kind of music that makes you forget. But still it would not make the somber quality of either going out, or coming back, any different. Yet, I can't help but wonder if the preciousness of those few thousand steps through our little town last Saturday evening isn't a kind of coda to celebrate the sum total of all the beauty, grimness, trash, noise and smell, loss, finality and peace. So maybe we better add "serious" to somber...like what is meant by "somber season."

Waiting to cross the street at the corner clock, I notice that it is slow by ten minutes...twelve minutes before six, it says. The usual press of cars, valets and patrons at Andiamo's contrasts well, I think, with the quietness of the Leader Dog for the Blind branch office across the street, its curious golden lion sculpture out front. There he is, caught padding the sidewalks himself, with his own equally serious expression, although it relates more to prey, or obligation, or patronage than mine.

Then, past the row of large frame houses, one with a old petrol pump out by the garage, the kind with a smoky white glass bulb on top, and a worn chrome handle on the side that you turn to prime, the sure end of travel a little bell that signals it's ok to begin. Starting along fourth street, I put both hands in the pockets of my coat, because it's cold (pleasantly so), and because I haven't yet climbed the hill, or quickened the pace enough to provide my own warmth.

I intend, all along, to go past the old town cemetery bounded curiously by "First and Wilcox, Fourth and Taylor." It's quite wonderful, really. No one is out. It is very, very still; a faint wind chime makes it more still yet. Now, the low sun breaks just over the last hill, where the graves are. Its rays alternate with gathering gusts of wind in the evergreens that ring the iron fence. I walk down First, past Ruth's stone (she and her student died one year and one week ago, exactly, on her way to a competition near Highland, broadsided as they made a blind turn across three lanes of speeding traffic).

A little down from there, four large urns lay on their side, empty, like trumpets all in a line. Once more it is clear that this could be either the beginning of spring, or the beginning of fall...either one. At the same time, the glint of sunlight, the rustle of the wind in the green branches above and to my right, signals that it is not the end of anything, like winter, or (what's the same), effort. Varied architecture and the green land, the long white church of the Reverend Dan Hutchinson, a baseball field with chicken wire for a backstop, no longer used, hidden behind a stand of pines and a single birch - that's the way home.

I am walking.

I am thinking now about walking. About how important it is, for thinking and mending and being.

I spent almost 3 years in Nepal a decade ago. People ask me, "What did you do there?" When I reply, "I walked around," they almost always say, "Yeah and what else?"

What else? Well... what else is there? I walked and I looked and I sometimes sat in tea stalls along the path and talked for hours. And if the conversation was good, or if the sun dipped low behind the Himalaya before the glass was empty, I'd pitch my tent and stay. For what? To get up and walk.

Posted by lekshe at 12:35:00 PM

14/01/2004

Been reading about silence.

Ran across this little sweet fragment. I love those moments of accidental discovery. All that searching, and suddenly you see, you're there. And you find yourself loving and blessing that which is There With You.

That's my path... whatever's in front of me. Right Here and Right Now.

I took a small path leading
up a hill valley, finding there
a temple, its gate covered
with moss, and in front of
the door but tracks of birds;
in the room of the old monk
no one was living, and I
staring through the window
saw but a hair duster hanging
on the wall, itself covered
with dust; emptily I sighed
thinking to go, but then
turning back several times,
seeing how the mist on
the hills was flying, and then
a light rain fell as if it
were flowers falling from
the sky, making a music of
its own; away in the distance
came the cry of a monkey, and
for me the cares of the world
slipped away, and I was filled
with the beauty around me.

Looking For A Monk And Not Finding Him
- Li Po

Posted by lekshe at 2:30:00 PM

I was talking with a friend this morning, a well-read, erudite man. I asked if he'd read Rumi, the great scholar-poet, Sufi mystic, born in 1207. He said, "No." I was stunned. This man has read everything I have read, wanted to read, and much, much I did not.

Not having read Rumi is something akin to..ummm.. not having eaten bread, or butter or jam.

I have read all the Rumi I have been able to get my hands on. In the end, I have settled on reading mostly that which is translated by John Moyne and then finely crafted by poetry professor (and self-proclaimed rascal) Coleman Barks.

Rumi's work has mind-stopping sentences. Some simple

The way of love is not a subtle argument. The door there is devastation.

and some, pith instruction for his path, which is in the genre of what I would loosely call ecstatic:

Trust your wound to a teacher's surgery.
Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,
those fliers of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.

Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound.

Don't turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged wound. That's where
the light enters you.
And don't believe for a moment
that you're healing yourself.

Argh! My heart! This same pith is found in Vajrayana Buddhist texts, which Dale writes so beautifully about.

And, like for people like Tonio, pondering silence, Rumi has something, too:

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

(from Quietness, in The Essential Rumi, by Coleman Barks with John Moyne. Harper Collins.)

And one of my current favorite Rumi muses,

They say there's no future for us. They're right.
Which is fine with us.

No future. What a relief. *laughing at last*

Posted by lekshe at 11:51:00 AM

13/01/2004

tiny zerO

Note from the Denver airport. Gate 29, way down at the end of the concourse. I'm sitting across from a tall man dressed in jeans and a black, long-sleeved t-shirt. White cotton sox, well-oiled boots and a simple, canvas jacket. He must be 6' 3". His hairline has receded. Not just now, some time in the past. Some of it's grey. His face is a round, weathered moon. He's talking on a cell phone and so far, he's ended every call with, "I love you a lot." Seems like he means it. I like this guy. Does he love me a lot?

I have close-cropped hair with silver highlights, too. And a black, long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans. I have a cell phone, too, but it's in my pocket. I rarely end phone calls with, "I love you a lot," but to this man, I might. OK. I wouldn't.

He's fiddling with the edge of his boarding pass, which is tucked neatly into a travel wallet. He dials another number. My cell phone is set on "vibrate" so if he's calling me, I'll know it...

He's not.

Actually, even though there are hundreds of people here, none of them have called. (Are there thousands?) None have said, "I love you a lot," or, if they did, I missed it. Are they calling each other? I'm not sure. How do we know these things? Anyway, I'll leave my cell phone on for a while more. You never know.

tiny zerO. why?

Posted by lekshe at 12:22:00 PM

12/01/2004

Well, Dale, here I go.

Of course, now I can't think of a single thing to say. See? Will it always be like this? Will I have the shortest blog in history?

So let me begin by saying thank you for being immediately & freshly honest. Dragons, tigers, roshis. The world is full of dangerous things, is it not? And beautiful things. Ashes and offerings indeed. That's the point, in a way. To have them all, exactly as they are, dangerous and lovely. As we are.

Time to sleep now. Even the moon thinks so.

Posted by lekshe at 10:57:00 PM