a journal of self-propelled dharma
In describing Zen practice Robert Aitken said that the schedule is the spine of time. I am Time’s chiropractor. I bend and straighten the bones. They flex and spring back. Breath and blood flow through and around, bringing the structure to life. Time is my medium, as for dancers and singers. I build schedules to …
I haven’t posted for a while and this is why: I am terrified of writing. I know that writing is what I need to do more than anything, to lay down faint traces of my one precious and fleeting life. I can’t go through all this hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing for nothing, right? I have stuff …
Impulse and Intuition got into a scrap. Get out, get out, run! screamed Impulse, in reaction to my itchy reluctance to being with what is. Beckoned by the spectre of boredom, consumer capitalism came flying to the rescue: Buy! Buy! Buy!, she cried, Spend some money, make it better! So I tried that. I found …
It’s so wrong to hate a bird. Wa-waaaaa, wa-waaaaa, wa-waaaaa. The chickadee is at it again, wailing out his schoolyard taunt. The chickadee’s mating dirge is a harbinger of spring and I suppose I could try to drum up some enthusiasm for it, but that depressing little tune makes me want to pack up and …
I have no kids, and no car to drive them around in. The things I am most grateful for are the things I did not choose. I got my drivers’ license at age 16 like many of my peers, and tooled around the burbs (dangerously!) in my dad’s massive Oldsmobile. But I lived in a …