The varying teachings “were provided to suit the different needs and temperaments of various people … If there were no human beings, there would be no Dharmas; hence we know that all Dharmas are made for men …” The Sixth Patriarch again, I presume.
Tag: Musings
Regarding Nosmo, our King cat
He got his name from signs I saw all over campus. NO SMOKING. Just move the space and it became Nosmo King. He was a solidly black cat with Siamese lines and smarts. As I noted when he was a kitten:
- He’s been here two weeks. Or is it three?
- Gained a pound.
- Approaching adolescence, he’s learning the ropes.
- Out of control.
- Banging the walls.
- Losing his balls.
- Jumping to the table top.
- Forgetting to wipe behind.
- Staying up all night.
- Adding chaos to our lives, not that he cares.
Like a breath of fresh air
“Learned Audience, those who recite the word ‘prajana’ the whole day long do not seem to know that prajna is inherent in their own nature. But merely talking on food will not appease hunger, and this is exactly the case with these people. … Talking alone will not enable us to realize the Essence of the Mind, and it serves no purpose in the end.” – Hui Heng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen, “having taken his seat and asked the assembly to purify their minds collectively.”
The Patriarch again: “Do not talk about the ‘Void’ all day without practicing it in the mind. One who does this may be likened to a self-styled king who is really a commoner. Prajna can never be attained this way. ….”
How I feel listening to so many sermons or radio-evangelist preachers.
“Prajna [Truth] does not vary with different persons; what makes the difference is whether one’s mind is enlightened or deluded.”
I never saw her in a skirt until her wedding
At the small-town paper, Marcy made all the difference. She was also a future Pulitzer Prize winner.
With her camera she cut through all the crap to find something of real value in the people.
Her signature touch often blended humor and compassion while giving a glow to black-and-white images of daily life. What she found added up into a larger statement over time.
Photographer Burt Stern was one of her inspirations of the hard work to strip an event down to a simple, direct image and underlying message, albeit his were often of commercial intent.
In those days, please remember, ours were mostly black and white shots, though her darkroom technique did wonders with the grays.
I noted her remark about a coworker’s husband who had no concept of aesthetics – a photographic silhouette, to him, meant something went wrong. He saw everything as “good” or “bad” reduced to a scale of “I like” or “don’t like.”
Yes, “good people” (like us) versus “bad people,” who may simply be different rather than evil.
It’s been a problem across much of humanity, though consumerism cashes in on it.
Sticking to what you like means taking the easy way out, rather than aiming for greatness or achievement. Many of the things I value in my own life started out as dislikes – opera, contemporary classical music, asparagus, lamb, meditation, beer …
I suspect she was the inspiration to make the protagonist in the novels that became Subway Visions, Daffodil Uprising, Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, and What’s Left a photographer rather than a writer. It was a step away from glorifying the writing trade. Besides, I had seriously considered becoming a visual artist but settled on writing instead.
“The camera itself creates and destroys illusion.” (Source long since lost.)
Why were those rocks adorned?
I became fascinated with Native petroglyphs, or carvings in stone, largely through reading scholarly reports when I was a social sciences research associate at Indiana University. The readings had nothing to bear on my paid work, but they did touch on some of the poetry I was engaging. I had no idea I would actually be viewing these in the wild barely two years later.
And here I am, 50 years later, living in a landscape at the other edge of the continent and aware that Native petroglyphs and petrographs, or painted images, are found hereabouts, though their precise location is kept secret.
Here are ten points I noted from the field notes.
- Were the drawings (petroglyphs) made during ceremonies before an important hunt? Did the hunting leader draw them? Or were they done by the young, during puberty rites?
- A given rock surface had “power” to bring good luck. If it worked, he drew again on the same rock. Others, seeing this, added their own pictures.
- Dummy hunters were erected as piled rocks.
- Pictures were used only when food, or the particular animal, was hard to obtain.
- In the sheep cult, the immortal sheep had certain supernatural powers.
- Salmon ascended the streams to benefit mankind, died, and then returned to life as a race of supernatural beings who lived in a great house under the sea. When the time came for the run, they would assume the form of fish to sacrifice themselves. (Sounds to me like prototype Jesus.)
- Eskimo keep the bladder of a whale, seal, or walrus they have killed and kept that in a jar of water all winter. Come springtime, it is taken to the edge of the sea, poured back in, and its soul is told to swim far out where it will find one of its own kind about to be born.
- The cult priests, or shamans, talked to these animal spirits.
- Did the advent of the bow allow excessive hunting?
- Appearance includes desert varnish, a patina where high summer temperatures and thunderstorms were found together. Lichen will grow in the drawings but not the surrounding rock.
Oh, hail, Indiana University
Or “heh-ell,” as the dialect might say. It’s been a half-century now since I left Bloomington as a research associate, and a few years before, when I graduated.
Rather than rave about the graduate library or the celebrated rare-books temple or the music or business schools, let me take a different tack, as viewed from now.
- We’re still in disbelief that the football team could have a winning season, much less be ranked in the nation’s top 25 teams. Basketball’s a different matter.
- Considering the conservative nature of the state, it’s a bit shocking that the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is located on the campus. Its extensive archives and research initiatives are discreetly housed, though, in the ivy-covered former Women’s Residence Center – or was, back then.
- Its collegiate gothic-style buildings are clad in locally quarried limestone. As are some more contemporary ones.
- The stream that meanders through wooded parts of the campus is called the Jordan River, not as a Biblical reference but rather in honor of David Starr Jordan, the school’s first non-ordained minister to serve as president – he was a scientist who believed in Darwinian evolution and left Bloomington after six years to launch Stanford University in California.
- Founded as a seminary in 1820, the school is one of the oldest public universities in America.
- The alma mater, “Hail to Old IU,” was set to “Annie Lisle.” a Scottish melody, as was Cornell University’s, and perhaps brought to Bloomington from Ithaca, New York, by Cornell alumni Jordan.
- A practical joke is spelled “boress” but pronounced a bit differently.
- The dining hall service continues to suck, as I’m finding in online comments. It was a major factor in the upheavals in my novel, Daffodil Uprising.
- On-campus parking is limited and expensive.
- Nobody’s ever figured out what “Hoosier” means, as far as I can tell.
On work itself, when done right
Reporter Tom: “I was building a cabinet several nights ago and everything kept falling into place, everything fit, I cut the wood just right and there was such a good feeling of simply working that in a way I didn’t want to finish the thing. They never taught us to work that way. It’s always to get the thing done.”
Nowadays, no sense of craftsmanship. No unity of elements or workers. Just things, not creation.
For Esquimaux artists, objects do not have to be seen but treasures to be unwrapped and felt on special occasions.
~*~
For me, walking has often been therapy
Let’s clarify.
- Not in hallways, parking lots, malls, or many suburban housing developments.
- Not purely for exercise, especially walking in circles.
- Often, I’ve found downtowns invigorating.
- Neighborhoods with homes that reflect individuality and care. Craftsmanship, detail. Gardening, shrubbery, and trees, too. Ivy can be magical.
- To get from one point to another. Think of exploring.
- On trails. (Going back to Boy Scouts.)
- Forests.
- Riversides and beaches.
- Up and down a hill or a mountain.
- As a break in the practice of writing or revising. I’m recalling the orchard and irrigation canal banks, especially.
Reaching across flat or rolling land
As I reacted somewhere recently, Endless Prairie, broken into what? Ghosts?
Most of my journals along these lines simply broke off.
Maybe I’ll revisit what I had and issue it later as a chapbook at Thistle Finch. There are limits to everything, after all.
Please stay tuned to see what else I turn up in this review of my past.
Within the journalism trade
When it comes to mass media, the real power brokers are the big advertising agencies that foot the bills or at least allocate the payments. Forget “liberal media,” the rig of the game is elsewhere.
Here are some of my early journal entries along the topic.
- Journalists are not eunuchs, or shouldn’t be. Those are the propagandists.
- More people know the latest Alka-Seltzer ad than what Scotty Reston wrote last night.
- The people of Fostoria hate the paper; they pick at the people who write for us, isolate them, castigate them. Within the city our only hope for recruits is among those outsiders who, like Teresa Beatty, simply don’t care about the neighbors. Yes, paradoxically, among the surrounding areas, our virtues are appreciated.
- Another difficulty is in our correspondents; they want to write only about their interests, will not take assignments or cover feature-news … In writing only what they want, they miss the cream …
- The R-T is a sinking ship. I see no hope … the paper cannot meet the city residents’ level of expectation without losing half of its circulation, the half that matters, beyond the city limits …
- These “news” items they send in: “such-and-so met at the home of so-and-so and discussed the topic of (insert title). Mrs. A was in charge of refreshments, Mts. B was program chairman, Mrs. C was greeter, and Mrs. D was hostess. X, Y, and Z were elected.”
- I used to think that if people were interested in the event, they would have been there and already know the outcome. Now I suspect they really don’t know where they were till they read it in print.
- So much potential here, nobody in our five-state (but not five-star) circulation area touches: so many “off news” angles, one could win it all. [Thinking now of Marcy’s touch / specialty / inspiration …] [Also, of Kurt’s later … and wishing we hadn’t lost contact.]
- Monday, an unsigned letter at work today, man who didn’t like anything: if we’d put out the kind of paper he wants, he wouldn’t like it: there would be nothing for him to rage about.
- Some people exist on their dislikes.
- Living devils, caught in their own hells.
“I used to think I had some control, but I’m finding out more and more that I have no control over the film. The film is gonna come out the same way,” depending on the performers, scriptwriters, prevailing moods, and other factors. “The material is being filtered through me, so it’s gonna wind up having my shape. And for me to think I can unshape it is crazy.” – Robert Altman, producer and director
My feelings after “having my own paper” on the prairie
“I hate to admit it, but everybody’s got the same news.” – Chicago Tribune Managing Editor Maxwell McCrohen on promoting features and columnists. He broadened the definition of “news.”
