brooklynometry

worm speed

2012-02-02T11:49:00.003-05:00

Every tree seems to try to teach something by way of the sweep of its gesture and other unpronouncable qualities. It's been a long time since I've walked slowly enough to hear what any of them have to say. I guess that's one benefit of this tenacious cold virus that's going around. It's good, belonging to slow.

Off Season Dog Beach

2012-01-21T19:37:00.002-05:00

Rents are low!

18th Street curb literature

2012-01-19T13:46:00.003-05:00

I came across 2 dozen various volumes of this publication from 1936. Don't really want them, but they're fascinating.

amnesia

2012-01-14T09:47:00.008-05:00

"You became what you became by remembering it, because it was very literally in your body before birth." Martin Prechtel. A mayan belief that beautifully mirrors the Talmudic teaching of the philtrum, the angel and amnesia. It states that in utero, the baby knew all Torah, all truth. But at the time of birth an angel comes and removes the memory by stroking the child above the top lip, leaving the cleft between the nose and mouth. " 'Hush' it whispers to the stirring child, 'Now you must forget.'"* These teachings bear the hope that heaven and all its laws and motions are in our physical body, and the work of life is to remember and recognize it. They evoke the Tibetan sage Milarepa's statement that the body is a tutelary deity, containing secrets and powers and protective efficacy that happens in secret, in the secret world of the kidney, the spleen, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the silent council of the city of the body, as if each one were a passage of forgotten Torah.

*Terryl Givens, When souls had wings: pre-mortal existence in Western Thought.

bay leaf boat on white bean lake

2012-01-13T13:25:00.003-05:00

Amazing how fast these cook up when you've let them soak for 24 hours. Since I don't have a pressure cooker (they scare me!) I cook dried legumes the old fashioned way, and they taste so much better than the ones from the can can.

spirea and zion's house of plants

2012-01-12T10:27:00.008-05:00

To date, my favorite plate from children's literature: the centerfold of Gene Zion's The Plant Sitter. The house became so full of the organically originating abundance that the walls fell off. I've posted it here before because I can't get enough of it. It's such a beautiful metaphor for some kind of Taoist practice of identifying with your essence and being fed and fulfilled by that gossamer elixer that drapes, sustains and saturates life to the point where all armor and peronality-identificaion concepts and devices fall to the wayside. What color is your parachute? Who cares. When you get to the heart of it, everyone has the same parachute, or no parachute at all, just a long, sustained plunge that inverted becomes an ascent.

Spirea, with buds forming. From spire, shoot, flame, sprout, a stalk of grass.

trees in the house

2012-01-07T10:23:00.008-05:00

All these trees did change people's lives, braided souls back together with parts too deep to describe, made our houses magical places, renewed and blessed us in a multitude of ways too subtle for words, as it seems only conifers can. What an honor it is to open one's door, symbolically, to the essence of a tree, the heart and grace of the wilderness, by taking a tree into the house, being blessed by its ancient grace. Thanks to the trees for being as generous as they are and always has been.

I daydreamed about having a tree this year...we never do. We always put presents around the plastic one my mother puts up every year. I passed by trees for sale on the street wondering what it would be like to make one of them a part of my life, a friend that close. I know what kind of magic it would have brought us. I didn't take one, though. Not this year. I guess I don't feel worthy. Or maybe there are other ways to get close to all the blessings and grace, sweetness and generosity the conifers and their relations bring to our lives. An homage is not enough by far to offer in thanks to what the trees have given. What does one do?

klipah

2012-01-06T10:51:00.006-05:00

It seems to me lately that you can't really embrace the physical without being spiritually nourished, or the spiritual without becoming intoxicated with the physical, they seem to loop around to continually embrace each other and give rise to one another. The essences of things always speak their names in the domain of the soul.

What I'm scared of, and what makes me so lonely, is wandering in the lost land where the empty shells of intellect are taken for actual things. As if there were an out there out there, unrelated to my soul.

tidings of comfort and joy

2011-12-23T12:24:00.004-05:00

Waking thoughts

2011-12-19T15:55:00.006-05:00

What asceticism might be about - not abusing the body because of its weakness and corruptibility, but aligning the higher and lower self when they are at odds on account of the thousands of kinds of addictions we suffer. It's a much broader issue than people's dependency on drugs and alcohol, it eventually will goad the subtle and pervasive dependencies like the need to feel perfect or better than others, to buy or wear what few can afford, to always win or succeed or exude specialness in some way. I guess this is what the lady was talking about when she said it was our strengths that we need to recover from, not our weaknesses. I've been waiting for more information on that point.

by the sea

2011-12-09T20:41:00.003-05:00

Jamaica Bay, Four Sparrow Marsh, Mill Creek

sky music

2011-12-06T15:38:00.006-05:00

I was walking down 18th St. and it seemed to me that the clouds were making something like a staff in the sky. I wondered what notes would roll by, or what kind of music cloud music is, in the traditional sense of the word cloud. I would expect it to warble inaudible tones.

My daughter asked me why water vapor floats, I did my best to answer, but I too wonder why the clouds float on a certain line, there's an invisible barrier there, almost as if someone had put painter's tape over the blue and sponged on some white. Or the reverse, depending on the day's predilection.

yellow leaves

2011-11-20T11:11:00.006-05:00

Found it impossible to do justice to this copse of gingko in Prospect Park, the camera sadly compressed everthing, shrunk the spaciousness in the depth created by the light and shadows and sadly diminished the elegant gradiant of green to yellow on the grass below the trees. You had to be there. You have to go there. It's in the Southwest.

Have you been there? Have you been in one of those night scenes that occur lately on streets lined with locust or linden, when, on account of the bright yellow leaves glowing against the night sky, you enter an infrared world? It turns you upside down, rolls you over, breathes it's yellow light into the world, makes every leaf your story of renewel.

november marigolds

2011-11-12T11:45:00.004-05:00

more here

he cumbers himself never

2011-11-12T11:29:00.001-05:00

safety in numbers

2011-11-10T09:58:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I walked through Occupy Wall Street and crossed paths with a man who was audibly evaluating everyone who passed by him on the basis of whether or not they were impressively counter cultural. Somehow he's was not aware that conformity, even upended, is still the problem. I know this man doesn't speak for OWS, that no single person does, but I have to say I've been waiting for the movement to become so cool to itself that it gains a cache of exclusivity. As hard as they try to avoid institutionalization, can they? Institutions, as purveyors of conformity, always lose their souls.

I found an antedote in Emerson, again. A dangerous revolutionary so dangerously revolutionary he becomes immediately forgettable. "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of all the bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his." (Self-Reliance)

Yes, to do otherwise would be a lonely, lonely pursuit. Emerson doesn't talk about that part. Occupy loneliness?

mulcher

2011-11-07T22:08:00.007-05:00

Last night my talent for sleeping failed for several hours so I was feeling a little skewey this morning when I passed this scene at the playground. For some reason the sight of this steaming pile of mulch, hot with decay, brought some odd feeling of relief. It's amazing to realize how much is happening in what appears to be nothing, and how much everyone changes every day without trying, modulating and striving for balance quiety and organically, as if the wisdom we can't help but accrue and the goodwill that we can't help but share has a chemical nature. Slowly, silently, so much is happening.

on my lips

2011-10-24T09:59:00.003-04:00

Discouraged and bound to petty worries, I see myself praying, praying to pray. As Nachman suggests, praying to find the words for the prayer that life provokes from my heart. Even as I articulate the words, I feel the swell of all that robs humanity of hope crowding around the new baby, this newborn prayer, absorbing its light and cloaking it in doubt and darkness. It's like a race, to keep the prayer always new, always at dawn, to fortify the words against a thousand corrupting influences. Maybe that's why an old sage might stay up all night to pray, to make sure the dawn is pure and nothing blocks its rays.

So, on your mark, get set, go, here's the prayer.

Let the soul of humanity be deeply nourished by the beauty of human souls and the mystery of their radiant origin. As a friend of mine might say, let us become drunk on the event of ourselves and others and warmed by the unseeable light that carries us continually into being.

Amen

the purification of nations

2011-10-22T09:35:00.002-04:00

In Zuccotti Park

2011-10-19T10:40:00.003-04:00

The double usage of the root "ecos" in this vignette at Occupy Wall Street reminds me that the root is Greek for home. That's all the Greek I know, maybe all I need to know...I was there with my daughter last night, she jumped in and insisted on painting a sign which read "Take Care of Earth," and tromped around carrying it high over her head. I love the fact that she didn't write "the" before "earth." It's more like when you say "give this to mom," you don't say "give this to the mom."

What kind of food, what kind of drink?

2011-10-10T07:52:00.010-04:00

Came across this by Hafiz yesterday..few manage to change my perspective on life in so few words.

A Cushion For Your Head

Just sit there right now
Don't do a thing
Just rest.

For you separation from God,
From love,

Is the hardest work
In this
World.

Let me bring you trays of food
And something
That you like to
Drink.

You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.

After I read this I asked myself, what kind of food am I given to weather this beautiful disaster? What kind of drink? They are such small, tiny things, a beautiful dream or an instance of precognition, a song that speaks to me in Motherese, words that heal wounds, but more than anything else, the chance to help someone retrieve the soul's inscrutable radiance, the flavor of life, because under these conditions, the home sick soul often finds a camp somewhere between this world and another, and our poverty doubles.

songs

2011-09-30T12:04:00.003-04:00

indian summer

2011-09-26T13:15:00.002-04:00

well maybe we put the pool away too soon. anyway it has a hole in it. now that it has drainage, it would make a good planter.

fishing line nest

2011-09-18T08:50:00.009-04:00

My daugher brought this home the other day, perhaps it was blown down by the latest storm. I imagine that it might be an oriole's nest because it looks like it could hang like a little sack from a tree, and also because it is essentially made from repurposed fishing line. The Baltimore Orioles I see in Prospect Park almost always appear near the lake, darting in and out of the phragmites or perched on tree branches overhanging the lake, and those places are unfortunately rife with abandoned fishing line.

The little one plans to leave it in a tree hoping that it will be reused. It's certainly tough enough for another go.

late season blooms

2011-09-14T11:25:00.004-04:00

I came across a healthy zucchini vine growing on the chain link fence on the corner of Propsect and Terrace. I wonder if I will ever catch that gardener in action, I've been admiring the plot for years. Anway, it's good to see a squash plant so healthy, this time of year many of them wither with some sort of fungus the family seems very susceptible too. I have a gourd plant in my front yard, a vine carrying many mature water jug gourds that is now practically leafless having been ravaged by some kind of disease, and the trellis itself is far worse for wear after the hurricane hit. I find it scenic and evocative, but I'm afraid my neighbors may beg to differ.

survivor

2011-09-09T09:56:00.004-04:00

The day after Irene hit Brooklyn I was weeding and came across this monarch caterpillar in the yard. So tender, so sturdy. The afternoon before I had come out of the house to find a family clustered around something on the ground under a Linden Tree, a Swallowtail Butterfly perched on a grounded twig, drying its wings. The mother turned to me and without caring who the heck I was breathlessly attested to its beauty.

I know.

hope & hoopoe

2011-08-16T09:00:00.005-04:00

A dispatch from Rhode Island, where anything bearing the name of Roger Williams gives me reason to hope, and that includes the tiny but awesomeful Natural History Museum here, where you can view a presentation called "Cosmic Collisions." As dire as it sounds, one somehow leaves the planetarium with reason to hope, largely do to the show's visceral display of how the earth's magnetic field assiduously shields the planet from the searing heat of unrelenting solar winds. It's just one facet of the many factors that allow life on earth, and one I've been largely ignorant of. All of which causes me to want to cry Upupa! like the Hoopoe.

Lagenaria blossom

2011-08-03T06:28:00.001-04:00

Cucurbita spp. Lagenaria siceraria

torso, belly

2011-08-03T06:20:00.001-04:00

'cumber

2011-07-28T14:14:00.008-04:00

A little produce from the planter. I wonder about the cumber part of the name, if it relates to the way the vines cloy and swallow all that they cling to in their efforts to find suitable anchors for their heavy fruit.

I wound up in Jackson Heights, Queens a few weeks ago and was astonished by the room-sized trellises many had built in their front yards. Those are my kind of people, even if their creations make the little thing I've rigged up look ridiculous. Made of three ladder lattices, it tilts to the side on its slim sticks, but the water bottle gourd plant, in a storm of growth, has taken it for all it's worth as it expands in every direction.

I'm a little shocked, someone suggested I get some kind of support hose for the gourds, I suppose to make little hammocks for each one in order to reduce the strain on the vine and allow the fruits to grow as large as possible. Talk about cumbered.

I don't think I'll be able to make a fuss about gourd sizes now, not with the new moon approaching and making my skin crawl with the folly of every sentimental bauble I've kept around until now. I'll take the gourds as gravity and the seasons makes them.

Janitor's Boy

2011-07-13T08:20:00.004-04:00

In Maine this week I came across a Brooklyn artifact. I suppose they are everywhere if you know how to spot them. This one was in a book of children's poetry I picked up at the Goodwill in N. Windham. It was written by a 9-year old girl, Nathalia Crane, and published in a New York paper at 1922. It makes me feel nostalgic for "spicy trees" of her imaginary refuge. I like to think these two are still out there on an overlooked island in Jamaica Bay.

The Janitor's Boy

Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy,
And the janitor's boy loves me;
He's going to hunt for a desert isle
In our geography.

A desert isle with spicy trees
Somewhere near Sheepshead Bay;
A right nice place, just fit for two
Where we can live alway.

Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy,
He's a busy as he can be;
And down in the cellar he's making a raft
Out of an old settee.

He'll carry me off, I know that he will,
For his hair is exceedingly red;
And the only thing that occurs to me
Is to dutifully shiver in bed.

That day that we sail, I shall leave this brief note,
For my parents I hate to annoy;
"I have flown away to an isle in the bay
With the janitor's red-haired boy."

Deep Thoughts (for Independence day)

2011-07-04T10:02:00.004-04:00

Internal politics & probably all politics stem partly from the aspect of the mind that has a habit of attempting to create reality rather than experience it. What is the natural state of being when some part of ourselves finally realizes that instead of perceiving the moment we are imposing a belief system on it and then experiencing only what we already expected to see? What kind of surprises do we meet when we take the lock of the world and see it for what it is instead of what we need it to be on account of all our hang ups? Do we have the courage to see the world and the essence of ourselves for what it actually is? Can we tolerate a fluid, ungraspable, undefinable reality rife with possibility? As soon as we decide it's one thing, we realize it is something else, or neither thing, or both.

Meister Eckhardt wrote that God is closer to us than our own skin. If we are to know that elusive but intimate friend, the mind and all its projections must take a back seat to raw awareness.

Something I found in my inbox today:

“…grasping, itself, actually is not at fault. That is the nature of awareness, that’s not at fault. What is at fault is holding to it. That is at fault, because when the mind is grasping, at the same time there is inborn wisdom that mind itself is not grasping.”

H.H. Shenphen Rinpoche, Basel, 1993

this week

2011-07-02T07:13:00.003-04:00

I've been watching the tendrils of a waterjug gourd plant tighten into coils and anchor the plant as it climbs the trellis.

must. be. in heaven.

I read that when crafting an instrument from a gourd the immature gourd is sometimes slipped into a box so that it grows with a flat front and back but keeps it's curved waist. Part nature, part industry!

Yesterday at the Lincoln Playground I saw a very sad girl drooping in a bucket swing she was too big for. Among children especially, and adults too, you watch moods come and go. Still I hope all the kids have a great summer!

manicure

2011-06-14T22:52:00.002-04:00

I hope you are in the mood for something variegated, and something fritillary, because that's what we came across in the alley. Hopefully it will look like this before long.

low firmament

2011-06-09T07:46:00.002-04:00

The Linden trees around here started blooming last week. The foliage is so lush that under each tree I find a little night spangled with flower and bud constellations. It's hard not to pause for a few seconds and hide from the heat, from the demands of the day, and to breath the nearly narcotic aroma. Under those trees right now, life seems distinctly kind.

neighborhood leaves and petals

2011-06-06T13:31:00.002-04:00

between cobblestones

2011-05-31T09:21:00.005-04:00

I think of it as chamomile but have no idea what it really is. I've seen it growing in various places around the park, looking like an aquatic plant shyly masquerading as a terrestrial one. Here it's mixed in with the heart-shaped pods of Sherherd's Purse.

animals in heaven

2011-05-26T11:52:00.004-04:00

On Tuesday I returned from Maine where we buried my grandmother on Raymond Cape. My little one and I took the train back here from Rhode Island, following the tracks that run along the Connecticut shoreline. It was very foggy so we often looked up to a view of pure milk, nothing visible except a few pilings under hints of enormous, invisible bridges. I dozed off and for a second entered some light-filled paradise which reminded me of vignettes I'd seen modeled inside scallop shells as a child, the silica encrusted castle of the Sea Horse King. I heard a voice say "she's really enjoying the animals here," which caused me to imagine my grandmother restored to her prime delighting in all the exotic, docile and extraordinary animals groomed by angels in heaven's stables, because how could there ever be a heaven without animals?

She had died the previous Thursday, my sister had called to tell me she wasn't doing well a little before I had to go pick up my kids from school. I was pretty upset so it seemed best to walk, and when I reached Prospect Park Southwest was amazed to see an enormous and immaculatley dapper raccoon ambling in the middle of the sidewalk. For some reason my dog didn't bark at it, and it slowly made its way back in through the park's wrought iron fence and up a silvery grey tree trunk a few feet beyond, it's grey belly blanching to white against the small tree's smooth bark.

It struck me as unusual to see a raccoon in the afternoon so I checked the clock to see what time it was. Later I found out it had appeared at the same moment my grandmother found the breach that leads from this world to the next. In all the years I've lived here, I've never seen a raccoon, although I've heard about plenty of the trouble they've caused. Of all the moments to finally see one. It was good company for a difficult moment. Life without animals is unimaginable, and so is death.

gems of bad weather

2011-05-17T12:38:00.001-04:00

Binding in the Stragglers

2011-05-17T08:50:00.006-04:00

In his remarkable treasure "All Things Being Equal" Chuang Tzu tells an exemplary tale of two men who met their ends by opposite means; one by having all his focus on his internal state, to the extent that he didn't see the approaching tiger that ate him, and another so focused on externals that he didn't recognize the disease that ate him from the inside out.

This parable came to mind when I was teaching my daughter to braid Challah last Saturday at Kolot; as you probably know, that's how you make a braid, you keep returning alternating stragglers back to the center. It seems nature itself is always trying to find a balance, and our bodies are constantly and imperceptibly making small adjustments to keep us in the best possible state of comfort and wellbeing, as best it can. Fullness and emptiness, activity and rest, focus and diffusion, standing and lying down, joy and pain take turns bringing us to a stable center just as last week's beautiful weather has given way to these days of rain. The braiding is a kind of dance that we are always a part of, a weave that wends through the stream of our lives. You could say this dance is the constant. It brings to mind the squaredance I attended last Friday, especially the part where each individual weaves her way around the circle taking the hands of each other individual who comes along. No one is left out, and the weave is immaculate. It wasn't meant to be anything but a good time but I can't help but observe that it was also a beautiful ceremony paying homage to nature's constant, the creation of metabolic, psychological and social balance.

Honestly, I can't say enough about Chuang Tzu in regards to the clarity of his thought, the seeds of beauty in his wisdom or the poetry of his language, and I can't say enough about the anagogy of the squaredance, and who could ever say enough about Challah?

a little creepy?

2011-05-15T10:14:00.005-04:00

Some strange ball hung between the prongs of our metal fence. On close inspection it turned out to be.... a ball of baby spiders!
Maybe they bundle together like that for warmth, or maybe they are all listening to story spun by a nanny in the center of the ball. It's a little like the volvox form in another language.

There seemed to be neither egg sac or mother in the vicinity. A little web surfing reveals that a Garden Spider like this is their mama.

sheen on a leaf

2011-05-13T15:41:00.006-04:00

Since the branch suspended the leaves at eye level I was able to notice the copper that glazed their topsides. Surprise!

Thanks to the litter mob that manicured the Midwood so thoroughly this week, I'm sure the forest appreciates it even if those that toss their refuse on the ground hardly notice.

freshly cut keys

2011-05-08T16:30:00.001-04:00

Maples do get busy early.

fig leaf & angle parking

2011-05-05T13:48:00.007-04:00

At the Community Board 7 meeting Tuesday night I got to watch the DOT representative tear the proposed angle parking plan in two pieces in front of an audience of neighborhood residents very much opposed to the plan. It was a relief. I'm relieved for the residents of the West side of 11th Ave. who would have had people's exhaust pipes fuming their homes and people backing up towards the sidewalk where children play, but even more relieved for those on the East side of the street who would have lost the parallel parking zone which now serves as a buffer against the traffic speeding down the street. But what will we do about that God forsaken corner of 19th and 11th, a de facto ramp for the expressway, where pedestrians take their lives in their hands whenever they cross? How many automobile accidents have I seen there since we moved in? For a while there it seemed like a weekly event.

round the hood

2011-05-01T17:13:00.000-04:00

It's enough

2011-04-29T13:11:00.006-04:00

In the West there doesn't seem to be a good emblem for those who starve even while they gorge themselves, or at least not one that's related to a spiritual tradition. Perhaps in apochrypha; the cannibalistic giants in the Book of Enoch, half human and half angel, rooted neither in heaven or earth, are so famished that they eat everything they can and they are still starving. They wreak such havoc on the world that God drowns them and everything else in a deluge that signals the necessity of a new beginning.

That never-enough syndrome of those prediluvian monsters wasn't washed away with the waters, it seems to have crept back to reflect to us the phenomenon of broken receptivity in human souls. They thirst but they cannot drink. No pollination can happen. It doesn't matter if God is immanent or transcendent, either way his rays aren't absorbed, nothing is ever enough.

In the Buddhist tradition Hungry Ghosts have huge bellies but needle thin necks, they can't receive even though they have the means of holding much. Thich Nhat Hanh explains the situation this way but I suspect the issue goes back to a lack of mirroring in early childhood. He writes "Our society creates thousands of hungry ghosts every day. Looking deeply, we see that they are everywhere around us. These are people without roots. In their family, their parents did not demonstrate that happiness is possible. They did not feel understood or accepted by their church or comminity. So they have rejected everything. They don't believe in family, society, or religion. They don't belive in their own traditions. But they are still looking for something good, beautiful, and true to believe in; they are hungry for understanding and love." Understanding Our Mind, p. 66

I've been watching the Hungry Ghost in me for a few years now, studying the way it takes everything for granted and is so rarely satisfied. Yesterday in meditation I saw my heart opening and closing; closing to the outside world in defensiveness so that I could receive no nourishment from it; opening to the world like petals emerging from a flower, ready to soak the astonishing beauty and freedom of the world deep down into the pours, ready to radiate whatever perfume of openness the mystery of the heart offers the world in return. I was stunned.

mudra

2011-04-26T10:18:00.003-04:00

I found these budding leaves unfurling on a Blue Ridge mountain top in Virginia. There's a lot of room in me to be filled with all that these latent ambassadors of sunlight can hold. I opened up my needle-thin throat.

a little appalachiana

2011-04-23T10:53:00.006-04:00

We drove back from the Fort Valley yesterday, it took about 6 hours, I completely forgot it was Good Friday. We thought about making a stop somewhere along the way but passed most all the attractions, Crystal Caves, Antietem, Roadside America, Hershey, the Crayola Factory. We did stop at the Pat Garrett Sheepskin Trading Post and Ampitheater but only for coffee. The kids oggled the assortment of knives through the glass counter and we didn't stay long. For most of the trip the ridge of grey-purple mountains in the distance flanked our left side, but as we drove North the name of the ridge changed, Blue Ridge as they call it in Va and Tuscarora in PA. Once we turned due East we passed over ridges that got increasingly smaller but were high enough to grant views of valleys full of developments whose angular forms sprouted in the lowlands like crystal aggregates. But none of those aggregates compares to that of Brooklyn.

Above, the Shenandoah at sundown winding in front of Virginia's Massanutten Ridge, taken at the Shenandoah River "Andy Guest " Campground.

soggy blossoms

2011-04-13T19:20:00.003-04:00

strange tissue

2011-04-13T09:22:00.006-04:00

The clouds above the neighborhood were very odd yesterday around dinner time.

glycerin and camillia

2011-04-13T09:09:00.005-04:00

I came across the top two images hanging in Ted & Honey's where I stopped to recover from the procedure I underwent at LICH and rectify my caffeine deficit. These images by Aaron Fedor hit the spot in many ways but especially by underscoring how impossibly beautiful, delicate and transient life is and how miraculously tender and marvelous the tensions that give structure to our lives are. Not so unlike this camillia blossom I found wilting under a bush at the Botanic Garden Saturday, smelling like tea at its best, coating my nose with its pollen.

I gather Aaron's eloquent bubble photos are for sale, inquire at Ted & Honey

Divining Perforations

2011-04-12T08:57:00.010-04:00

This hangs in the waiting room in the basement of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) located in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, a catapult's launch from the Buttermilk Channel. I was there yesterday for a little blood letting/needle biopsy ceremony. I'm so glad for the hypnotic effect of the faux fish tank in which swam faux fish whose bodies seemed to swell irregularly as they perpectualy circled their tank.

I'm confused about all this tissue business and kind of surprised that anyone reems long needles into anyone else but I suppose things like that have been happening for a long long time, and far worse, as this parable from 350 BC that I came across moments before the PROCEDURE indicates.

Lord Yüan of Sung one night dreamed he saw a man with disheveled hair who peered in at the side door of his chamber and said, “I come from the Tsai-lu Deeps. I was on my way as envoy from the Clear Yangtze to the court of the Lord of the Yellow River when a fisherman Yü Chü caught me!”

When the Lord Yüan woke up, he ordered his men to divine the meaning, and they replied, “This is a sacred turtle.” “is there a fisherman named Yü Chü,? he asked, and his attendants replied, “There is.” “Order Yü Chü to come to court!” he said.

The next day Yü Chü appeared at court and the ruler said, “What kind of fish have you caught recently?”

Yü Chü replied, “I caught a white turtle in my net. It’s five feet around.”

“Present your turtle!” ordered the ruler. When the turtle was brought, the ruler could not decide whether to kill it or let it live and, being in doubt, he consulted his diviners, who replied, “Kill that turtle and divine with it--it will bring good luck.” Accordingly the turtle was stripped of its shell, and of seventy-two holes drilled in it for prognostication, not one failed to yield a true answer.

Confucius said, “The sacred turtle could appear to Lord Yüan in a dream but it couldn’t esape for Yü Chü’s net. It knew enough to give correct answers to seventy-two queries but it couldn’t escape the disaster of having its belly ripped open. So it is that knowledge has its limitations, and the sacred has that which it can do nothing about. Even the most perfect wisdom can be outwitted by ten thousand schemers. Fish do not (know enough to) fear a net, but only to fear pelicans. Discard little wisdom and great wisdom will become clear. Discard goodness and goodness will come of itself. The little child learns to speak, though it has no learned teachers-because it lives with those who know hot to speak.” Chuang Tzu, Basic Writings, page 136

This sentence "Discard goodness and goodness will come of itself" seems to travel at light speed in all directions at once. It's an anarchistic statement if nothing else, but let's not get caught up in politics. It's the internal anarchy that matters as it airs the soil of self and grants relief from the long standing oppression of the short-sighted presumption of sanctimony. That standard that everyone should be subject to? Just another chimera.

narcissists

2011-04-11T19:10:00.005-04:00

Word Play

2011-04-08T14:49:00.005-04:00

I hate shopping very much, but this article that I just came across when googling the terms "theodicy in the odyssey" may help me see much more in it than the mundane. In case you didn't know theodicy is an attempt to show that evil in the world doesn't negate the goodness of God, so it makes a toothsome subject.

a few more dragons

2011-04-07T14:43:00.001-04:00

new life

2011-04-07T14:40:00.001-04:00

double blind

2011-04-05T09:40:00.008-04:00

You woke up this morning considering the difference between the stupidly idle and the profitably zealous? Me too, I'm not sure I really see it yet. I defer to the tongue of a man whose tongue led him to its end, so beware. Here in this introduction Giordana Bruno writes "He is double blind who does not see his own blindness" and later " The stupidly idle are buried in the lethargy of the incapability of judging their own blindness, and the profitably zealous are aware, awakened and prudent judges of their own blindness, and for that reason are in quest and on the threshold of the attainment of the light from which the others are banished for a long time."

It's been a strange day, the morning was bright, then dark, then bright again. I went to bed sick of myself but not losing hope that today really could be a new day for me, not knowing what would emerge from the other side of my cataracts. I tried not to fill the well. It's already full. So I tried not to. With more sloth the zealotry.

Post from Paradise

2011-03-31T10:26:00.005-04:00

Working on this sermon that Nicola Masciandaro asked me to write for an event called The Paradise Sermons has me, at this moment, sitting in the grace of what some might call the Black Madonna. She's got me by the back of my neck like a tiger mother.

Becoming satured with her truth is like drinking from the well of embodiment and seeing the halo around all the *inadequacies* of reality. Weep! Thanks to Nicola for the engaging me in this experiment.

More explanation at Sunday's event. Info here.

wet weather

2011-03-25T11:03:00.002-04:00

exuberance

2011-03-19T00:29:00.003-04:00

on the berm

2011-03-12T16:52:00.008-05:00

We had a chance to walk along the top of the berm that runs along PPW this week, I like to think of it as the neighborhood's closest thing to the Appalachian trail. We found an evergreen weeping sap, a tree with a hidden charcoal-black recess, varieties of pine cones and needles, bottle caps and some rusted batteries. My daughter and I will go back and clean those up, and my son would like to but is worried about being caught in the act and considered a 'dork.' Don't judge him, though, he reminds me of how many young people must think it's cool to litter and uncool to bend over and pick something up. Often it seems that to be read as "good" by another is the last thing person wants, perhaps it even seems vaguely dangerous.

I saw a man on a subway platform suddenly drop a dollar on the ground, and at first he showed great concern, although he didn't bend over to pick it up. As soon as he saw other people had noticed, and when another man bent over to pick up the dollar and hand it back to him, the man acted as if he wouldn't condescend to touch that dollar. Is this pride in action? Is it an atavistic instinct to fear that as soon as one bends over another will see this as a sign of submissiveness and subserviance, just like pack animals read each other's behavior for signs of weakness? People are complicated and there's much to understand about why someone would throw or drop something on the ground and neglect to pick it up, and another would gladly collect it without worrying about how they'll be viewed. We all seem to be wrapped in layers of our values, conditioning, and instincts so thickly that we can't really understand each other's choices and tendencies very well. Seriously, call in the anthropologists, this city is full of diverse tribes.

What makes someone volunteer to pick up other people's garbage in Prospect Park? I would wager it's often LOVE for the park, plain and simple. Thanks to the park volunteers.

light through lakewater

2011-03-07T10:16:00.004-05:00

My daughter tested the lake pH and reports that it's 5. She triple checked and tells me the lake has a pH equivalent to black coffee - I'm not sure about that. There's lots living in it - I'm not very good at photographing micro invertebrates but if I were you'd see abundant copepods swimming in some of these shots. My child also tells me that the lake was originally meant for ice skating - did it ever freeze solid enough for that?

hawk and prey

2011-03-05T08:47:00.001-05:00

Well, I always assume any hawk I see around here is Red-Tail. But maybe it's a Coopers?

dreamland

2011-03-04T06:25:00.001-05:00

some orange

2011-03-01T15:41:00.005-05:00

Still not sure what that card that was served to me with the homemade orange/carrot cocktail said. Well, thanks anyway.

Dream Guru

2011-03-01T11:14:00.004-05:00

Wondering about the man in my dream a few days ago who looked like an aboriginal Maharshi. He said, in a kind way, "you're either running or crying,,.. running or crying...." which today has me wondering...when my soul cries, do I hear it? What sort of courageous effort does it take to just take care of one's own soul much less solve all the world's problems? What does it REALLY want?

The soul is a difficult treasure to foster. But some manage! Buddha said, "straighten yourself." Meanwhile my email is filled with endless requests from different organizations trying to solve the world's problems, perhaps casting yet another lasso of agenda around the mummified hostage. OK, I choose, ummm, gratitude that those groups have the fortitude and focus to sincerely try.

in the trees

2011-02-28T13:25:00.002-05:00

recent visual notes (scales)

2011-02-21T08:32:00.001-05:00

another post about prayer

2011-02-18T16:08:00.007-05:00

I think I take my blog in my hands when I write about prayer, because it sounds so weird in this part of the world to talk about that, there is no sex appeal in it, the NYT blog would never link to it, and frankly causes all of our brilliant sexy atheists to run for the hills. But it's a little too late for me to go back now!

While people may pray for a certain result, the act of prayer itself brings peace and a retreat from constant manipulations that we feel we must exact upon worldly matters, over which I feel I have little control. But that's not really what I want to talk about now. It's just how the other day my first grader was sick and asked me to pray for her, and I said I would, but I didn't. Later she asked me if I had and I told her I didn't, but I wanted to, and she said it was ok, that when it comes to prayer wanting to was the same as doing it. I think there's some truth in that, although I believe she lets me off too easy, although maybe I was too busy praying with my deeds as I cleaned up the mess and gave her what she needed.

It sounds kind of like she's been reading Eckhart. I have the impression that for him, an intention of that nature is as good as the deed. It is compelling to know that he was persecuted by Franciscans, but even before Francis met his end, he knew what abuses of power would find their way into the order. Because ultimately orders are human.

Record & Tape Center

2011-02-14T10:15:00.008-05:00

I certainly hope this shop never gets a makeover. A door like this was something I couldn't pass by that day, so I went in for the first time. I have a feeling Tony, who runs the shop, has a few stories to tell, from the look of the door, from the fact that he's been in business there for 41 years.Maybe I'll get him to tell me some, but that day, he just sang me a little tune about telling stories, and sold me some picks.

lowlands

2011-02-08T22:34:00.009-05:00

Monday I was in the low lands, the Lowes land, the Lowlands. There's a good view of the Culver Viaduct, which I admire, from the Lowe's parking lot, and a little park that lines the Gowanus, relatively unused lately by the look of the unpocked but sagging snow. I guess in the recent weather not many have been down to this tranquil spot from which to view the steel claw at work loading the scrap metal heap onto the barge. Takes my breath away, really, I must be a 4-year old boy. That neon green birdhouse installed by the Gowanus Conservancy seemed uninhabited but I'm sure before long some Gowanus minnow/ scrap metal eater will find a comfortable home there, a short wing away from where stands the nested bridges of the Viaduct and the draw bridge below it, kind of like pants under pants.

The Lowlands came later when a group of musicians had assembled to play old time tunes, sweet to my ears, sweet under and also on top of sweet I think. And sometimes a little sour, but not so much that night.

I understand the viaduct's getting some kind of an overhaul, which is why in order to get the F train to Manhattan I have to go two stops in the wrong direction and change trains. I'm hoping for the best, since most everyone I know goes over that complicated structure everyday at least twice. There's a nice view of the Statue of Liberty and the Gowanus (one of the world's most polluted waterways, come see!) from up there.

To Judge and Not Judge

2011-02-07T09:37:00.005-05:00

Walking with a youngster I know I was suddenly overwhelmed by the harshness of her assessment of a man passing by. I said "you shouldn't judge so much." She said "people deserve to be judged." She's the alpha in the family, so I'm trying to figure out some way she's right. At the age of 13, it's pretty important to be able to size people up I think. It happens at the gut level and takes hold like a steel jaw. Perhaps it's not fair to tell preadolescent not to judge people as they negotiate all the strata of themselves and others to find sound footing in their increasingly autonomous social affairs.

But you can tell them not to judge themselves, when they've failed, and they fail often. The sting of failure gets under the skin like an inoculation arousing parts of their immunity to avoid similar missteps. It's such a long, long painful, curative process. As the proverb says, the righteous man falls 7 times a day, but he rises again. I am in awe of that moment when the paralysis of failure seems to wear itself thin and somehow the morning sun rises again, and though the first ray may be barely noticed, before long the long light is flooding the avenue and we are heartened by the length of our shadows.

We are the shadow and the observer, and as complex beings we have to simultaneously judge and also not judge, and in so doing, keep the judgement from gaining the solidity it needs to grow into a grudge or a prejudice. We can watch our judgement bud, flower, wilt and fall from the vine of our minds when we leave it alone instead of becoming enchanted with it. Does anyone really want to stick it in a jar and pickle it? The judgement did some work, and in someway perhaps showed us ourselves as it sketched parameters that we need to trace to find our way.

Perhaps the judge is too harshly judged, perhaps the judge creates other things besides conflict. Maybe the judge helps us maintain balance. What we really need is an honest judge, that's all. Because there's nothing more heinous than a judge that lies. So maybe it's not really judging that's the problem, but the lying that seems so enamored of it's false superiority. Because we all fall, 7 times a day.

heart of fennel

2011-02-05T12:16:00.004-05:00

st mary of the snow

2011-02-05T12:12:00.005-05:00

manometer

2011-02-03T22:51:00.004-05:00

Maybe it's best to leave the definition of "manometer" to the imagination. Since I can hardly tell you what it is, if you don't already know that it's a device that uses a spinning mirror to indicate the effect that air pressure associated with the enunciation of different vowels sounds has on the stature of a gas flame. Makes a cozy illustration in a book whose title escapes me, and I won't fetch it now because the explanation I attempted above has me ready to snooze. Good night!

old tools

2011-02-03T10:48:00.004-05:00

I found these in the shed, one of many of the rotting structures behind some BK houses. The one on the left looks handmade from a kitchen knife and a linoleum blade. The awl is something I really needed, or at least will need when and if I lose a few pounds.

more snow in prospect

2011-01-28T13:14:00.009-05:00

Yesterday it seemed like marshmellow fluff. Today, globs of it caught in tree limbs, it seemed a lot like shaving lather, thick and in many places throughout the park unmarred. I don't think I'd have gotten far if it weren't for a network of ski trails that were tamped down solidly. I wanted to go see the waterfalls because of the smerfy feeling the snow's been giving me, what with every circular object wearing a gnome's hat. It wasn't so smerfy there at the falls, more straight up 18th Century gloom.

There was a moment I wish I'd captured, it was when the dark wood beyond the lake was shot through with the white marks made by a large flock of seagulls, flurrying their graceful white shapes, rephrasing the falling snow in avian form. Once on the frosty lake they were no longer white, not when set off by the white of the lake's snow-covered thin ice.

Lot Goose

2011-01-27T16:59:00.006-05:00

I was wondering what creatures had become casualties of this extreme weather. Last night on an errand on 7th Ave the kids and I were pelted with sleet that pinched like tiny needles as it fell at an unknown velocity from the laden clouds to our lips and eyes. And then it got stranger, waking up to some of the stickiest snow I've ever seen luxuriously redressing every exposed surface. Some kind soul with a snow blower took it upon himself to clear the sidewalk around the house on the corner so the woman who lived there only had to shovel her stairs when she came out. I don't admire those that own corner lots on days like this.

When I took the dog down to Prospect I saw that even the vinyl Key Food awning had a good amount of snow stuck to it, a parking lot barren of all cars, blanketed with the same dense carpet as everywhere else. Something had parked right in the middle of it, a lone Canada Goose marooned smack in the center. I later discovered the goose had been injured and saw a bloody gash behind its right leg. It must have felt good to lie there with the thick soft snow numbing its wound, the world snowed in and away. It had been there since about 4 a.m. according to the woman on the corner. I went home and brought her some cornmeal which she nibbled when I was a safe distance away. I doubted she was able to leave but was proved wrong when a golden retriever approached. She was in the air a split second later, heading West.

Globigerine Ooze

2011-01-26T13:51:00.010-05:00

Well I suppose that's not what will become of the snow that's falling today, coating several strata of now filthy micro glaciers underneath it that may or may not see a thaw anytime soon. In drier weather I recently came up on a cast-out book, The Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom by V.J. Stanek. It was good and dry thank goodness because the Pictorials are really amazing, tight cuts of the most striking animal glamour. Above, glamour and luxe too small for the naked human eye. No one really knows exactly how oil came to be, perhaps it's fossilized reptiles, perhaps algae, vintage globigerine ooze.

marigold seeds

2011-01-23T07:03:00.000-05:00

new coat

2011-01-21T13:27:00.004-05:00

threshold

2011-01-19T09:20:00.005-05:00

We gota 4 month old puppy from the North Shore Animal League, the largest no-kill shelter in the world. They collect dogs from kill shelters all over the South, and brought up our puppy from somewhere in Virginia just a few days before we adopted her. It must feel amazing to save all those lives. She's warmed up to the snow a lot since last week, but trying to housebreak a pooch on a day like yesterday was kind of pointless.

sugar and salt

2011-01-18T17:32:00.009-05:00

I was kind of wishing for rain to wash the salt on the sidewalks away, those knobby lumps that get stuck between the dog's toes and make her limp. Sorry if I got what I asked for. As for sugar, its hexagonal, and I wash it down with my coffee. Sometimes it gets stuck in a gourd, and then you have to roll it on the ground.

Bridge

2011-01-17T09:30:00.005-05:00

It's MLK day today and I'm thinking about the sound of his voice. All my life I've heard it and it was always more than words, more than vision, something like milk for the soul, a time-release launch that keeps blooming into expanses of courage, nourishing atrophied and distracted hearts satiated by lies and starved of the ultrasound of compassion that trembles in his voice. It is a sound to fall asleep to and wake up in a promised land.

H & TV

2011-01-17T09:27:00.001-05:00

Wonder what show blew the set out?

snow on the rose bush

2011-01-12T17:46:00.003-05:00

From the NYT science section. Sometimes you can't eat just one.

mammography and hagiography

2011-01-08T09:26:00.009-05:00

I went to Borough Park this week for a mammogram at the junction of Fort Hamilton Parkway and 65th St., across from 3 Brooklyn Guys grocery store. The scenery was not pretty, not with the snow heaped up in filthy mounds and nowhere to park but the hagiographies of Buddhist sages that I read while in the waiting room melted my heart and made all my hair stand on end.

Life is really really strange. That morning I had been watching a video over and over again of Johnny Horton singing The Battle of New Orleans, for pretty obvious reasons that include costuming, charisma and a voice I couldn't get enough of. It was kind of strange that one of the sonographers at the lab looked a lot like Horton, Brooklyn style, and kind of strange that the day before I had been watching videos of Dylan and the exterminator that showed up to treat the apartment upstairs was a ringer for Dylan (with Adam Sandler's brown eyes.) I've looked for explanations of synchronicity but don't think I'll find one that can answer for the profound strangeness of things. How does anyone explain how Horton foresaw his death at the hands of a drunk driver and had to live in the suspense of waiting for that to happen for months, behaving a little like a paranoid schizophrenic? Poor man. He was so resplendent, he reminds me of the winning team in a Aztec ballgame.

the mystery of the cabbage

2011-01-05T12:15:00.003-05:00

It's impossible that this tastes as good as it does, sauteed with ginger, sesame oil, garlic and shitake mushrooms. It is impossible.

ice in the hoof prints

2011-01-03T16:59:00.002-05:00

1.1.11

2011-01-02T22:38:00.003-05:00

I was surprised that many I know headed into the water on New Years day, here in BK at Coney or where ever they could. Two weeks ago I would have never thought that I might be included among those testing their personal antifreeze, but as of that morning it became clear I'd be joining in. As if the thought had been thought for me.

Happy New Years!

2011-01-01T16:50:00.004-05:00

Portland Harbor

travels

2010-12-31T19:27:00.000-05:00

tributary

2010-12-27T12:19:00.005-05:00

I fell asleep and immediately started dreaming about two rivers coming together, cutting a ravine through stone strata. It was a romance.

my mother's weird whisk

2010-12-27T12:18:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T12:19:00.003-05:00

Happy baby solstice sun! One strange thing I've learned lately, there are directions within directions, and seasons within seasons. So maybe this is the spring of winter?

belated solstice medly

2010-12-23T10:27:00.003-05:00

present for clam

2010-12-21T09:17:00.001-05:00

red tree

2010-12-21T09:06:00.008-05:00

This little birch grows in a pot in front of 125 Prospect Park West, where we were kindly invited last week to make gingerbread. The color of the bark struck me enough, I'd say, but when I noticed the branch collar that looks like a heart, I had to check my eyes. It turns out I know the woman who potted and cares for this tree and its twin, which are red on the East side which faces the park and yellow on the side where it gets the building's shade. Red in the East and Yellow in the West, the color wheel always does as it likes.

chasing the sun over the hill

2010-12-19T09:49:00.004-05:00

de hydrangea

2010-12-18T10:38:00.002-05:00