...reach the place of peace, the satisfaction of stilling the functions of the mind...
- Dhammapada 25.368




Last night,
looked at
float copper
from Keweenaw -
imagined it
adrift in glacial soil.
Does metal
find water,
live with stones,
or wind as metal can,
riverine in miniature, a rill?

Still,
that's only part of the story.

Great Lakes copper's been
panned, sifted,
mined,
refined,
sacked, looted,
bagged, boxed,
weighed.
Assayed
specimens
were
traded before,
during,
and
after even
ancient wars.
Redder than
we've been led
to believe,
this metal,
this stolen
sun
under us,
hidden
once
and still
in a stream
of dirt.

Even if previously careless when one stops being careless, one illuminates the world, like the moon breaking away from a cloud.
Dhammapada 13.172


Vata
the banyan tree
and we,
underneath.


Tripundra
and Bindi,
sea
cinders
burning
eyes -
insight.


Anjali
brings hands
to the heart,
just as
the banyan
reaches
from
ash
to air.

Kamandalu,
a simple
brass vessel
that is cherished,
carries water,
prayers.

Tiruvadi,
the shoe
of 
the good,
the wise,
who
touched
by love,
rise. Aum.

If seeds (Rudraksha)
cry tears of suffering,
Let our lives make malas of them.

Ganesha agrees, offers as he
eats to share his sweet, Modaka.

Hamsa, the goose, realizes fed souls in flight
might find
peace among the stars.

In a museum,
the floor,
the ceiling
need to be awakened.

Allow accessibility.

Imagine the present as posture, gesture.

Place a docent
on her knees
in front of
a painting.

Children
there,
deeply looking.

Tonal values.
Valves.
More than an eye.

"One is one's own guardian...." -Dhammapada



Of
this -

a child's paw
in an old spaniel 's eye

an ear bud
a nosebleed

men's friend fired
what will he do?

stay the child
bind the eye

and

cauterize
cauterize
cauterize

waning gibbous - " cooled off, and without fuel..."
-Dhammapada 26.418


Starboard

On the first, "Vesta stood still".

On the fourth, meteors rained near boots,
heroes, and dragons.

The fifth
sounded
a hallelujah for
Earth, at perihelion.

On the seventh,
in America,
the moon greeted
Aldebaran -
السلام عليكم


The tenth's
full wolf moon presaged
penumbral lunar eclipse,
trembled slightly.

On the 11th,
Uranus stood still
until the
bright moon
breached the beehive.

The pre-dawn 13th
witnessed the moon in Regulus,
twice shining, pixilated.

The 17th
ground
to mortar,
last quarter,
tuck-pointed.

On the 18th, a pre-dawn
Antares swore as,
scorpion stung,
he began a war.

On the 19th,
Algol, the demon star, waned,
feigned exhaustion.

On the 20th,
the moon grew old,
tired of fighting,
while on the 21st,
Antares cedes as
the besieged, relieved,
triumphed
both in heart and soul.

On the 22nd, the old moon stumbled over Jupiter.

As the 24th ended,
the moon lay dying,
hidden for a day,
to appear again
on the 25th,
young, winged, though slight
and mercurial -
brought in by the New Mouse Year.

Delighted on the 27th,
Peace witnessed
stolen kisses
between love and water.

Late on the 28th
the moon
love fogged
slyly
slips into
the sea.

Lunar dalliance,
inner shadows,
an outlier's
impossible
optimism.

Rejected
on the 31st,
the moon
chides
its lunatic self
and, woeful,
wanders far
past the seventh
planet,
to another star.


there where there are others
also circling, 27.
Understand sorrow,
pathways,
procedure.

to start
as after,
 again.

My first day back at school.
I'm calm.
I wake to truck grumbling
at 5:30am.

Now at 8 the saw, metal gnaw, and a blinking metal bell knell.
Generator whirrs, whirls, coughs spits on.
Loud tools percolate.

Ice melt under construction.

Last night was quiet - too few scavengers.
Have the foxes fled,
love another garden instead?
I don't blame them.

Noisiness fences us in, cold plants, old snow and me, these days.

Characters in a narrative are not the reader, the writer, the book itself.
Their fate remains outside the control of these three, and isn't entirely known
until the spirit reveals itself.

Command of the word is not command of the thing.

is in death
participant -

six years,
my dear.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.
- Toni Morrison

muybridge

 

                         

for an ache -

arsenicum

album

gas =

lycopodium

clavatum

the tums

of homeopathy -

peppermint

camomile

tea

take

one

take

two

take 

three.

apple parings,
michigan,
translated as
a
spiritual equation.

apples
and
lake,
a
global cake
and
water.

Your imagination creates your non-fiction.
- Kahlil Joseph

Storing art is like placing it in purgatory.
- Noah Davis

Spirituality is an interesting word. It is highly underrated in contemporary painting, and I feel it is the driving force behind the practice. it is the spiritual nature of painting that makes it different from any other form. The practice has a history so vast and forgotten that it can only exist in the land of the spirits.
- Noah Davis

there isn't a narrative in this (add what) .
no matter.
when the latter
is shown
it's well known
we're
likely
to palimpsest it.
as a story,
we'll attest
to its long
life as such.
still,
much
that is added
to art,
isn't there at the start.
formal prospects, like gardens,
weed.
we makers cannot control what seeds
grow from looking. 

I wake every day
not to birds but
to eight hours of
an underlying hum
from engines, heavy machinery.
The Baldoni house, across the street,
is becoming a bank branch,
a very posh one.
North Shore wouldn't have set foot here
when the neighborhood
tanneries were open. Italian and Sicilian
were spoken then, in kitchens and
among schoolchildren.
Birds too, lived here, flocks of them,
full of other languages.
I heard an ornithologist say
we've paid a price for this
current "standard of living",
that people my age have heard more birds,
have given witness to abundance.
Gone.
Wasn't that long ago either,
that wildlife inhabited local places.
Vacant spaces, without lots of,
that's what I know now.
But this absence isn't silent.
It's a working, daily presence of human-generated noise,
filling, spilling into my studio, my bedroom, my art.
I resist all this the only way I know how,
now making things that are quiet,
punctuated by remnants of other sounds,
still found around the edges of
where I live.
I keep my ear awake, in the air, where are found the fewer,
sounds, the seeped-in songs of another belonging.

CALENDARS by Jim Harrison

Back in the blue chair in front of the green studio
another year has passed, or so they say, but calendars lie.
They're a kind of cosmic business machine like
their cousin clocks but break down at inopportune times.
fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar
but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons
of greed and my imperishable stupidity.
Of late I've escaped those fatal squares
with their razor-sharp numbers for longer and longer.
I had to become the moving water I already am,
falling back into the human shape in order
not to frighten my children, grandchildren, dogs, and friends.
Our old cat doesn't care. He laps the water where my face used to be.

Found sounds,
words, are hanging
haphazard there,
where, while
rummaging
through,
you find
poems out of place,
seeds,
stones,
small bones,
teeth in pockets.
Amazing what's
inside
the mind
that needs sorting.
____________________________________________

Let us construct a center for healthy minds,
introduce a curriculum of compassion,
coexistent with thukdam, things.

_____________________________________________

"All there were were fireflies, and from them, you could
infer the meadow."
Dark Matter Physicist Rebecca Elson

_________________________________________________________________________


"Undersight"

gruffy ground
sounds a
swallet,
as a rickle,
tickles time,
rimes the sward,
remembers the word for.

thoughts on Underland, a book by Robert Macfarlane


__________________________________________________________________________

Brain werk work
a  s m a l l (samll)
rettam

______________________________________________

stop sign
traffic light
stop traffic light sign traffic stop sign light stoplight traffic sign
tops craft lit sin raft post sing sigh 

Why did I write "stop sign, traffic light" down?

_______________________________________________


そうでないふりをシナで。

intimations of (im)mortality

We have
hands
somnambulism
dispelled rumors
benign tumors.

We haven't
John Clare's yew
or John Clare's Mary.

We have shrugging pines,
bees, still quite a few,
and a sage, called clary.

We have rosy maple moths.

We have
seagulls,
terns turning,
prairies burning,
the orenda, and hosho,
but no
sloths,
no matter who calls you that.

story

⛇
⛇
⛇
⛇
⛇
⛇
⛇
⛇
⛇


🌑

story

1 →→→→→↑→→→↓↓↔↗↘↝↝↝↝↱↴⇀⇄⇆⇉⇒⇓⇢⟶⟶⟶⟶ꜛꜛꜛ⃗ꜜ⤠ .

          2 😐😐😐😶😶😲😳😮😤😐😐😐😲😀😉😊😌😯😐😐😐😐😐😐😷😔😔😔.

         
         3 〰〰〰🔰🔍🔎〰〰〰〰〰🔝🔜🔜🔜🔜🔆🔆☁☂☇☇☇☇🌑🌙🔥🌠🌠🌠🌠☉🌙.

story

Within me are found sounds, words,
Herded there where
they're
waiting.
While
sifting through them,
I find,
within the dirt,
out of place
stones,
small bones,
even teeth, and seeds.
Seems the mind's fertile ground
and its found sounds
yield mixed
time, that
might, or might not, need sorting.
____________________________________________

Let us construct a center for healthy minds,
introduce a curriculum of compassion
that will coexist with thukdam, things.

_____________________________________________

"All there were were fireflies, and from them, you could
infer the meadow."
Dark Matter Physicist Rebecca Elson

_________________________________________________________________________


"Undersight"

gruffy ground
sounds a
swallet,
as a rickle
tickles time,
rimes the sward,
and remembers the word for.

thoughts on Underland, a book by Robert Macfarlane


__________________________________________________________________________

Brain werk work -
knot not
a  s m a l l (samll)
rettam.

______________________________________________

stop    sign
traffic light

stop traffic light sign traffic stop sign light stoplight traffic sign
tops craft lit sin raft post sing 

sigh 

Why
did I
write
this?

_______________________________________________

座禅
只管打坐
Shikantaza

Sit.

そうでないふりをしいないで。
sodenai furi o shinaide

Don't pretend otherwise.

Not believing everything we think.
Not pretending things are otherwise.
Let's put it to work: meditation's mirror.

_____________________________________________________

This January, can I leave "it" behind as a personal pronoun for sentient beings?

______________________________________________________

Opus 40 - Harvey Fite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_40

____________________________________________________

bus ride words:

ablation/ ablate/ ebulate/ acanthus/ ontology/ rollund/ carbonate/
avuncular/ trophic/ adolesce/ liquin/ dunk/ dank/ modal/
fleurescent/ annote/ evocate/ polymath

______________________________________________________

The World: Don't practice an ignoble way of life, don't indulge in a careless attitude. Don't
follow a wrong way, and don't be attached to the world.
Dhammapada 13.167


Moon. New crescent.

The cumulative effects of one year may require frequent revision in the next.