What’s so Zen about Zen? I think, what makes Zen uniquely Zen is its insistence that everything is innately perfect and complete, with no need for adornment or improvement. Those stock-photo images of a smooth stone, a bamboo stalk, a dew drop on a leaf… they are zen clichés, but they do tell a story. …
I am watching my breath
I imagine my mind as a door: a light screen door, swinging back and forth in a gentle breeze. The breeze is my breath, blowing in, blowing out. My mind is the swinging door. I am watching my breath. There’s a deep pain in my hip. My stiff neck. A conversation with my old lover, …
Remembering Tammy Fudge
I remember Tammy Fudge. That really was her name. As if that wasn’t enough, Tammy was gangly and awkward and kind of funny looking. She had no friends. If you sat beside her you wouldn’t have any friends either. You knew that in that dangerous and delicately balanced pre-adolescent universe, to befriend Tammy Fudge would …
The warrior dance
The dragon lives three levels down, somewhere near 140 bpm. In solid techno, the rhythm of power and rage. The essence of me it thumps my solar plexus curling, unfurling one microbeat faster than the heart can race. Hands ball into punching fists pounding feet round the fire stomp boom! boom! with the warrior beat. …
A grouchy old woman
I go to visit Rose at her assisted-living facility once a week. She is 98, tiny and frail, semi-blind and semi-deaf. She can shuffle slowly around with a walker, but needs a wheelchair to go beyond the building. As she breathes she makes a high peeping sound in the back of her throat, an effect …