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 10 Jun 2005 @ 09:25
In the presence of eternity the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
---Robert Green Ingersoll
One bird sits still
Watching the work of God:
One turning leaf,
Two falling blossoms,
Ten circles upon the pond.
---Thomas Merton
Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know nothing else but miracles---
To me every hour of night and day is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
---Walt Whitman
Bush in Ohio again yesterday.
Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
My right wing friends may be surprised to learn that since "they dropped (the Downing Street Minutes) out in the middle of (Tony Blair's) race," as Bush angrily put it the other day, I have been replying to emails and message boards about them by urging great caution. I say "surprise" because we on the left always are characterized in panic and hysteria by the right. What I've been writing in reply is that the incriminating evidence in the memo seems to be fixed upon the single word "fix." I just have used the word in that very sentence in a way that gives rather a different meaning than "let's fix the horserace"---or let's do something that will assure we will win and the others lose. Or let's fix the election. Essentially in the UK I think writers of minutes and memos are more likely to use the word "fix" in the sense of "affix" than we are over here in the States. Therefore, I've felt the sense of the memo can be construed to urge its readers to concentrate on finding evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, rather than just make stuff up.
However, now that I've seen both Bush and Blair respond to the issue---and a couple more days have passed---I've decided to get a bit suspicious. Blair and his team did not go into what "fix" might mean in the UK, and Bush just got customarily pissed that anyone would question his tactics. It seems to me this president does not possess the character to entertain either criticism or objection. I think it is the main trait the left finds so dangerous about this guy. He sits there dumb and confused until he gets a message in his ear, and then starts talking, usually derogatorily about a person rather than an issue, eventually gets angry, and then lashes out. There are diagnoses for people like this...and I find it an unnerving kind of personality to be revealed in the most powerful person on earth.
Most of you reading this now subscribe online to Truthout. I hope you send them some money from time to time. (It's easy and you feel so much better.) Truthout sends so much stuff each day that I want to underline the article written yesterday by William Rivers Pitt about the Memo. You might have missed it or, like us, been very busy with daughter graduations and such. His essay is the best summary of the Downing Street Memo that I've seen...and even if you too are cautious about calling the memo the smoking gun or some kind of evidence of chicanery, I think it will do you good to read it...and save it to read again. Have a great weekend! More >
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 8 Jun 2005 @ 19:17
Love the pitcher less, and the water more.
---Sufi saying
No one can live your life except you.
No one can live my life except me.
You are responsible. I am responsible.
But what is our life? What is our death?
---Maezumi Roshi
The point is to perform every activity, from playing basketball to taking out the garbage, with precise attention, moment by moment.
---Phil Jackson
From the free wallpapers at [link]
Saturday evening we went to a party at the home of some new friends at Ohio University. Our host is from Bangladesh, and he and his wife, of Irish descent, had brought together a most diverse group of individuals, tentatively to warm their new house and check out the construction of his wine cellar...as well as its contents. There were couples from Bengal and Serbia, the local rural counties around Athens, and teachers at every level of education, many hailing, like me, from the Northeast. Faizul teaches in the College of Business, and some of his colleagues were invited. Dana and I agreed we wouldn't be talking politics in there. This would be a social occasion and we'd be on our best behavior. More >
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 24 May 2005 @ 10:46
The photo, with my son Jeroch, was taken a year ago immediately following the final performance of a play I was in...so there's still a touch of stage makeup visible.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself.
---Michel De Montaigne
I have full faith that even when you are down you will not sink, you will not falter, you will not crawl because you will be that special child who understands there are moments in life when there are no answers, no rhymes, no reasons but to grow beyond yourself.
---Grange Rutan
You are relaxed and ready. You are prepared for the operation. It is an initiation. You are being initiated. Such initiations have been practiced forever, under other names. You are safe.
---Indira Parsons
That particular thought of Renaissance philosopher Montaigne has been among my favorites for many years. Grange and Indira are 2 personal friends, who emailed me their encouragements a little over a year ago, before the "operation." I printed out their complete messages and have carried them with me in my wallet ever since. I don't usually do that, so I must assume it was only the first of the new behaviors since---initiation. More >
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 12 May 2005 @ 08:22
Sun rising over
the mountain path---
scent of plums.
---Basho
Everything is miraculous. It is a miracle that one doesn't melt in one's bath.
---Pablo Picasso
I learn every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: PATIENCE is everything.
---Rainer Maria Rilke
Remember when the American Legion or the Daughters of the American Revolution used to sponsor that essay contest for schoolkids? They probably still do, and maybe the prizes are the same---and the best behaved student in the class still cranks out that same essay...and even reads it to us at some compulsory assembly. I never tried to write one because, even as a kid, the topic seemed so huge I just couldn't get my head around it. More >
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 11 May 2005 @ 08:50
Today means boundless and inexhaustible eternity. Periods of months and years and of time in general are ideas of men, who calculate by number; but the true name of eternity is Today.
---Philo
Example moves the world more than doctrine.
---Henry Miller
In Buddhism there is no place to apply effort. Everything in it is normal---
you put on clothes to keep warm and eat food to stop hunger---
that's all.
---Yuan-S'ou
Photo of Ilona and the author on Easter Sunday.
A year and a week ago I underwent major surgery for removal of a prostate gland that had been determined to be a bit cancerous. I wrote about it and talked openly. Cancer is as terrifying to people of our civilization as just about anything we think of. I learned in the waiting rooms, however, that it makes brothers and sisters of us in treatment, as men and women struggle with their own varieties. The silence in those rooms is broken with great relief when we start talking together. I thought writing and letting people know what happens to me might serve some purpose---at least for research because so much effort is going into finding a cure...or even a cause. More >
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