folding the body
108
times

ill still

but rest has opened me
to thought
prayers
the body
given
more
than before

hibernaculum

this evening under it

integral

to this

is
is
that

yellow gray

that is
soil -  a color of
a peculiar smudge of sky
specks of windblown dirt
or strong winter haze
days trying to paint
yellow gray

Ill

spent in bed and painting
I'm ill

rarely so

rill

erodes
until
gullied
streamed


river

loess

pronounced luss
south and west of us
yellow gray
wind blown
soil

daydream

Bob shoveling snow

Jasmine in Ubud

Anca's hole in the ceiling

under
milk skies

enter
emptiness

rescuing
them
from danger
and
confinement

I daydream about
those kinds of things

sick as a dog cause

I am sick as a dog
my brain is foggy
my decisions should not be trusted

therefore

I
am
free

of interpretation

imagining

light as a post to
and  reply

texting
without the love letters


an echo
an echo
and then

stop

to begin again

as above

so below
I can't get on to
youtube
or access


peace

where I'm going next

it's on
the devil comes at four o'clock
we're ready  for him
the question is
where are we going next?

dry sip

it isn't cost
it is just ignorance
inside the bottle

don't quote me

globe

snow
falling
on

sleeping
beside me

how many breaths per minute?
soft full low long - 17, 18, varied

your fingertips are torn paper dry
skin cells die quickly this week

clammy to the lips
that kiss
you
a toxic piss spill

still
you're
at peace

alive

more boats

you read

Orwell on Kipling
(" I don't know much about him really")

I gild

green paper boats

the house is clean and quiet

more boats

this morning I bowed in my head
I heard the prajna paramitra

like the Milwaukee River
running black in my brain

free

boats
aren't thoughts

prayers
aren't thoughts

cancer
isn't thought

clean
quiet
clear

more boats

nowadays

I  cannot count the times I have scratched this from essays
by Koreans and Chinese
Kuwaitis and  Saudis
an occasional Brazilian

nowadays is the um of adverbs
and so condemned to fill the awkward pause of second language time

it's not fault but ubiquity
that irks

in this tongue we like to hedge as we imply
leave a little wiggle room
to forget the present
ignore time for signs
of
something
not
quite


here

first heavy snow

a white light foot of it

K's dream

second day after chemo
weak
sleeping most of the day

you say -

the best dream
was the one
where I made a lot of money
for my boss
George Washington

Saints day

Saint Damascus, a man

a book in Latin

a lion a book another man

the window where
Jerome
stares out
impatient with
boys and snow

Fed on joy, wind, green apples.

Brought together
as honey and dust
as cusp above
so below

the point being
earth

and what it raised

rises

repeat

an open book

a closed book

a work in progress

not what we ask for
what we are given

your sadness will not go away
but you will go away

what legacy?


what grace?

my sister made a small hole in the universe
planted a seed
and grew 

regret
comparison
yearning

are the three magi
of the heart

acceptance
clarity
gratitude

devotion
a gateway
and illusion
beads

count your blessings

give
even when
you are
unsure

mandela

died
95
95
95

arhat

on  ice

2 years

have passed
I don't have a Master's which had been considered
or a cat
another option out
but
my husband got sicker
and I stopped blaming him for him
and decided to love all of this -
the unseen
the stubborn
the lost
the what if
and the what wasn't
and the what is

who knows what hold the past has broken?

work

too much
too little
with holes

all told
whole life
isn't too bad

change

toussaint whitefish
fideles
red

thief

one word


מלה





كلمة
palabra
ordet
워드
an focal

dream

grew a forest of kalanchoe
flowering out
from the inner dark
of  brain and stem

question

mother, can you see me here
it's a cold place
where my kind are rare
as, perhaps, they always are
(you'd say)
I'm lonely as
Willy's clouds
or
a single drop of rain

mother, tell me,
have we considered forgiveness

are we done with one another ?


can we feel, mother,
the undone other
and his mother

within?

a very short introduction

to
the
next appointment
(destiny)

meeting you

meeting you
orange roses
Kerala pickles and
book drowned Nazis

clap sensei

what
is
this?

Ison

meet the sun
done

one un
done.

dogen's done

said let's see more now than before

message

in this year of stupendous ups and downs

today let's be thankful for the small miracles Life offers us

and may we gather our strength and will to create a positive 2014

filled with genuine Buddhist serenity, generosity towards others,

and unprecedented artistic achievements.

Love is difficult.

And then we love some more

thanksgiving

the light that comes
before it reaches
an end
one candle
two

mid-morning

first             snow

to

stand and watch each other now from separate shores

farwah

a thobe
a robe
a coat

24

began at midnight with
a braking door and glass

drowned feet in the phillipines

light

wind

a meal
silence

ends with

first quarter urgency

bead

drop of

the skin

counts

infinity

fall back

one hour
new moon
to earth

avant

garde

chrysanthemums
by the eastern fence

all souls

new moon in Scorpio

16, 219, 220
the Dhamma says
"coming home after being gone a long time"

had a dinner of smoked trout

you were under water.

we saw a movie about the sea

and another about a pool,

fools and wise men in both.

we fought and walked, later wept.

you slept in sweat, three times changing your clothes.

anniversary

in four days twenty years

Robins fighting

near the pin cherry, in midair.

Nabatea

the subtle drops within bell cisterns hold
fluid women and water.
buried here a lost city - stillborn stone.

alone.

port

Snaking under the collarbone,
lifting out of the skin,
the port begins with
collapse,
begins
with
lost.

I have fears of surrender.

He's lost 6 pounds.
His body lifts as I unwrap the arm with the bloody tube.

the bloody tubes

the clear clean poisons

the constant mediation of the puncture

I have fears of undertow and deflation,

of us, port side

done.

roots in pipes

bird hits window

the oddball again

the oddball

say one thing

i love you
on my mind
all the time

in the garden

white throated
vesper
sparrows
returning
junco
vireo

"ground-loving"
ovenbird
wood
wood thrush
wren
then
brown creeper
brown ground
sound
downy
woodpecker

this one
the color of the crushed
yellow
leaves

they are sieves
birds
in the
garden

change

low cold
blue moon
midmorning veery

full

lull

null

swelling

two
swellings
on the forearm
punctured skin

within
low
low
blood count

causes
friction
causes
anger
causes

unknown.

what isn't

here
what
isn't
here.

parts

hers
a child's body broken like a doll
an arm
a sealed pubic mound
left among pages of an illustrated book
dessicate
a beige, brittle cruel dream

his
a leaning garage he's painting
in November
with a clumsy man
who falls into an icy pool
and topples into a neighbor's fence
the garage will fall
he tells me after waking

that
which
trembles


shook.

one
or two
things
matter:


how
his head
enveloped in candlelight

resembles

a
small
vase of
flowers

chill

harvest moon soon

film

first
he
light sensitive
full of liver
lessening tumors

second
slender toxic filament
finds him

scrimmed
under water

third
exposed
unfolding
narrative

drawn

to water
the
spill
the rill
the fountain's frisson
the reason
for
stone
canyons
arroyos
flooded
fields
of rice

paper

drawn

after wane

rain.

fleur

orchid
proteus
hydrangea
tea rose
stattice
gerbera
carnation
chrysanthemum
dianthus


goldenrod
chicory
valerian
boneset
thistle
milkweed
coreopsis
echinacea
clover
asclepias
nightshade
aster

birthday flowers

purple
fuscia
lilac
crimson
scarlet
coral
salmon
yellow
orange
yellow
yellow
purple
purple
rose
green
green
green

navigation

waxing crescent
the mind
wanders
far
wide
alone

all water

under the skin
moist
muscular
earth
pulled
moon


gravitas


heart h.

lack of

Drought
crops renewal
kind of


scary.

summary

strange month's exposition
wave-like rising and falling
to an uncertain
resolution.

news

a week without
bloodletting
doctors
sick rooms

I feel he said
something has left me.

ache

the bones
complain

what love drives me to be still
when within I cry out
weeping into my hands?

boat

1000
copper clad
and green
wishing your life
afloat.

seamus

dug through life
unafraid
returned to
ground

peat driven, loved.

the clearwing

sun humming
a probiscis unfurled
into
into
the hottest day's flowers
reminds one
of other
delicate winged
dreams

hot

it's too
darn


.

foxes

3 kits and
a mother -
their earth is near.

Hearing mice at 150 feet,
we watch them leap.

The night air deadens red.
Instead,
only shadows play, tails tipped
in white.

I thought

To be born blind
and see much!

Such life for 4
in darkness!

I have lost my balance. I read too much about illness and death, play dice with statistics, bargain with fate.

Let him live a year. 

birds

The box elder gone.

Still,

cardinal
thrush
warbler
creeper
woodpecker
nuthatch
sparrows
wrens

6 days

finished with

chemotherapy
edema
nightmares
catheters
a watermelon
2 cantalopes
peaches
plums
and
4 apples (Pink Ladies).

what matters

can be measured

108 prostrations

a kilometer a day

3.5 quarts of fluids

waking

walking

washing.

succession

he

my
single
chronological
sequence.

rain

bone
stone
water
once

again

refugia

avocet beak

her favorite.

spent

so much
out
only now
at midnight
can I spend  tears
and
sleep

diagnosis - before

When a man is without self-identification with any object or idea, and does not grieve for what does not exist - that is what is called a Bhikku.    Dhammapada 25. 367


This -
known from
a discernment, an accumulation,
by sifting through
ciphers.

Here the signature - naming it.

anger

spent.

nothing remains.

standing still

keep moving
the doctor said
he is standing
(still)

changes everything

pain
a picture of it
that
changes
everything

late afternoon

air so clear
a second day
blue deep water
sailboats, a pod of them
his pain
his pain
we sit and look
we sit and look again
we are clear
for a second day
and true blue deep
as an endless
late afternoon

LUMA

July 20–November 3, 2013

“The absolute acknowledgment of all that lies beyond us—the glory that fills heaven and earth.” This definition of worship by author Evelyn Underhill is what artist Teresa Albor references in her installation All That Lies Beyond Us. People of all ages, faiths, and nationalities are invited to participate by writing to Albor about their own evidence that something lies beyond us.

Over the life of the exhibition, submitted statements will be written on the gallery walls of the museum.

my answer Albor's  "Why I know something exists beyond us": 

I know this? No, no knowing, an impossiblity of knowing - that is biological and timely. This is more a sensation within and without time, within and without my personal me, a sense of before and after and now losing relationship, slipping into one other seamlessly, on and on and on. So why not ghosts and heavens, gods and God, godlessness, nothing, lux continuum, absolutes of longing and completion and darkness? 

unripe

pears
so many this year
living half
dead
twisted into

4 days left to live

boat

hope
floats

wait

wait
wait
corner light voice
inside mind
I thinking you gone
sobbed
but there beside me
propped up
too many pillows
waking at 5
to take codeine
playing with time
wait
wait
that signal voice
encapsulates what cannot be
those liver spots
my red ache too
you you
fine boned face
slender
lids over blue
breathing
breathe
wait

full moon

dream -

rescued
cat
full of fleas

bathing
saves
fur

her pure white purr

a full moon

e x h i b i t i o n n o t e s for a u g u s t 2 0 1 3

LIVES BY WATER 

a (brief, finite, female, male) history of

light and darkness

39 millennia

5 living religions

second languages

Fibonacci sequences

enzymes    ectopic tragedies 

remissions    recurrence

e  l  e  c  t  r  i  c  i  t  y

the course of

vascular systems

(riverine, botanical, poetic inheritances)

simple present

a gift

to be

time (less) 

three continents of rivers

a copper stream

108 

1000

100

99 names of

think of your life water

fulvic

fundamentally

inseparable

from

scan

liver
nodes
doctor's consolation


biopsy.


next,

not falling.


attention -
most
prized
possession

dream

moon waxing gibbous

108 stones
bindu
copper

thursday

black road
uphill
bridge

wind
window

father
son
walking

calgary
is a pear tree

tenderly I now touch all things
knowing
one day
we will part

john of the cross

blue glass ring

given

a circle

blue

fragile

silica

sand

band

to remember you

when far away

anger

round the Qaaba
a hundred, ten thousand times
never free

this unkind word
breathe it in instead of out

and rise

an outage
for 4 hours

his pain for 5 weeks

lights on

pain

pain

his

interrupted awareness

walked

night
half moon
fireflies
boats lit float
stars
stars
trees
see small things

7 kms?
more
no salt here
only wind
and
freshwater

hard to think in heavy heat

term of endurement

awake at three in the morning

"..neither wealth nor splendor,

but tranquility and occupation,

that give happiness."

thos. jefferson

lungta

five wishes

what's wrong -
his
bile
or
blood
or bone?

his stomach is a glowing stone -
hot pain.
in water, he rinses for hours.


what's growing
in him
this sleepless night?

good
bad
empty
clean
stomach

pain

is


is

I'm not ok
with
pancreas
colon
metastases

what I remember most
3 faces
serious
eyes lowered
unsmiling

I won't let you take more codeine than prescribed
you can't eat everything
or second guess
a
bad
good
empty
stomach

3 books

to take thirty years of my artmaking life

three books

open book

closed book

work in progress

mixed up

none so adjectival
as
relatively
if and where
when used
a noun
clause

summer field

sweet clover
yarrow
also called
millefoil
common toadflax
milkweed

lights

100
small
bright

bend
shadow
metal
water

berg

pine island calf antarctica 

new moon ramadan begins

last slice of noon melon

pies frios

under the ice

drained lake

floods fresh to sea

자비 동정

jabi
dongjeong

통렌 (tonglen)

불완전 (bul-wongeon )
i m p e r f e c t i o n s

사랑이 가능합니다

  salang i ganeunghabnida

    l o v e  i s  p o s s i b l e

ignore warning

underneath her
two blue feet

karuña

lopsided
imperfection


cultivate

corn
juniper

compassion

gertrude

june 28th
she died

bronze age

90% copper
10% tin


from a single mine
deep in England

a possible 26 million cuts

malachite
tines

green ground
smelted ore

bellows
breathing tempo

at the edge of
village
knowledge

casts of clay and

stone
sword
excalibur

news

boundaries between the spirit world and the natural were permeable, and things like rocks, trees and water sources -- including caves -- "were places those boundaries could be crossed."

tasting 2.6 billion year old water

clear 

deep within the earth

a mala from fire

a tasbih from Yemen

the child gave her the rosary

and said

pray with me

angelic mistakes

said roger lipsey
to

merton
who
drawing
knew

lax
reinhardt
suzuki

he
53

see
another mistake?

karma
god
guess

water
electricity
baptism
death

mountain monk

Think of the old married monk,
living in a hut on the mountain -
his thin wife,
fat little dog.
He came out for a half jar of candy,
and spoke only hangeul,
slowly, as one does
when
utterly incomprehensible to another.

We
left
something  small.

All
walked uphill,
through his garden of fruit trees and vegetables
smelling of shit, piss, and earth.

anonymous

was a 

geomancy

many drown in the north
where weather and religions meet
the earth is water
the sky has no air
stone is the only hope

a great mast within
tie yourself to it
plug your ears with duck down
don't
listen
to
the

a convergence of stones - baltic sea/ jeju island

history - a lecture on korean buddhism by frederick starr 1918

"we are told that in the year 378, as the result of the coming of these foreign (Buddhist) priests, the city of P'yeng-Yang was laid out as a great ship. To us this sounds strange. It is not easy for us to realize a city was regarded as a great ship and that a mast was erected in its midst, aparently in order that the sails of prosperity might waft the ship to good fortune and success. Outside the city were stone posts to which the ship was to be tied up, and for many years it was forbidden to dig wells in the city because it was feared that if a well were dug, the boa would spring a leak and the whole place would be foundered. ...I am not sure if such ideas are connected with buddhism, or whether they only form a part of that old gomantic philosophy whic has so greatly influenced Chins, Korea, and Japan through centuries....Old masts are scattered all over Korea, here and there, sometimes in quite inaccessible places; built of wood, they rise to a great height, and are sheathed with metal, which may bear an inscription and date. Many other places that P'yeng-Yang were thought of as great ships - temples, cities, entire valleys.

below from http://fengshui-harmony.net/blog/korean-geomancy-fengshui-korea/

In 1929 Japanese researcher Murayama Chijun collected 174 different names of geomantic landscapes in Korea. However, looking closer some names have not been recorded at the time, so the estimate must be even higher.

These personified landscape systems function to accumulate and manifest vital landscape to the occupier. Similar to Chinese fengshui the aim is to live in harmony with the surrounding and to enhance its own dwellings with an abundancy of auspicious qi. In Korea however, the geomantic landscapes are taken a step further.

In the geomantic landscape of a sailing boat for example, the Korean believe that to dig wells are equal to putting a  hole put into the bottom of the boat. So places declared as the geomantic landscape of a sailing boat hence do not allow people to dig wells for fresh-water supply but instead the people rely on rivers and lakes nearby which are often contaminated and not very clean.

In the opposite direction, if the landscape seems to be missing a sail mast or anchor, these are artificially created by the local people so that the geomantic landscape picture can be fully applied. The anchor for example is very important as otherwise the sailing boat and its auspicious qi could travel away.

If the landscape resembling a sailing boat features helm, sail mast and anchor the place is very auspicious. If it has none than the site is regarded as the boat being instable and it may capsize or sink.

An example for this type of landscape formation is Haeinsa Buddhist Temple in the slope of Kayasan Mountain.

Haeinsa Temple in Korea

The ecological links concerned with this landscape image are as follows:

• no digging of wells (equals a hole in the boat, so it would sink)
• restricted numbers of dwellers (otherwise the boat would sink or capsize)
• providing a mast (by erecting a mast)
• floating the boat in water (by creating a water feature if it is not naturally given by a lake or river)
• stabilising the boat
• anchoring the boat (as otherwise it might move to another area)

Hence the idea of the geomantic landscape is very different in approach to the Chinese one. Even though there seems to be the one or other folk story on similarily described landscape in China, this type of approach to Feng Shui has not been recorded in any of the classics nor is it commonly used nowadays. It is a very specific Korean approach to geomancy.

dream

Jebel Hafeet
1249 meters above
Oman and the Emirates
saw it from my window
dusty
magnificent
a dhow floated by mid-air
and a mullah called prayer
it's there
in the darkness
of my mind

woke to rain and a tribe
of chattering finches

rain

wettest in memory
this month
the roof is failing
an old, tired roof
exhausted by water

the roses are gluttons
greedy for the soaked soil

the air cool

a woman in India
scolded all
this is the inundation
the tipping point
of new and mighty
storms

we leave behind
the still
and enter a
torrent

monsoon festivals june india and ladkh

18.6
Dussehra
when the Ganga descended to earth
Varanasi
Haridwar
Rishikesh

18.19.6
Padmasambhava
birth of Tantric Buddhism
during Hemis
in Leh Ladkh

23.6
snake boats racing
Champakoolan Moolam
in Kerala

24.6
John baptizing
Sialim, northern Goa

boat kuwait 9000 bce

transformation

bronze heaven
paper flies
into tree
iron collapses into 2 kilos of

he wrote
my boat
he

near
my dear
harbor

where does it go

theoretical displacements
anticipated resurrections

always

all


here

what

was
will be



is

from a letter to another artist

Acts of intention become practices. Practices can become integral to insightful living.

day

warm

after storm

wind

daily practice three

do

blend
extend do

to you

and you

all involve

a balance of

daily practice two

108

half-lotus mud

find center of pool

earth

danjeon is dangerous

lungs float boats

nostrils fill sail

water exhalation

daily practice

he said

the force of

resolution

the white seed

familiarity

rejection

prayer

each

word
defilement
prostration
breath

contains
what will
continue

said

you shouldn't be here now
ruined the seventh month

why didn't you go
far, far away?

let's write up an agreement
you can't live here
as you wish.

invisible.
that's your ticket.

relict

kalpa


the cd


within a crystal stupa

Xoloitzcuintle

here

a splinter of  bone

x

marks the spot

(SHOH-loh-eets-KWEENT-lee)

where the dog god grew

to j re: a

in your village, j,
sun
radishes in the garden
reading poverty fireside
distilling eau de vie
clear
colorless
politics


you are in the middle j
tenth letter prose
closed earth
secure

"a"  has a half thumb, clawed,
broken fingers
missing earlobes

he wanders the dark
afraid of girls on bikes

he doesn't know
Panegoosho
Keats

beauty is truth he said
half dead
his alcohol cheap

"a" begins each infinity
large and small
sleepless
afraid

he's an artist too
like you
a minotaur
in europa

1000 boats before a wedding

desire
one
vessel
at a time

years coming this
unexpectedness
a coupling
a coup
you
you
you

loved

for 1000 lives

mala notes

Fishing line's not right for this -
doesn't express
emptiness.

Saw
thread instead,
soft to wind
bind a wrist or room

Seeking soft and string -
is it black as
blackest light of the heart?

A start,
this remembering the heart.

Losing
empty and full
is wise, difficult  work.

Deceived by invisibility?
What exists is
shadow,
form,
a conversion between,
seen
now.


How?

a.m.

"flod" boats folding
bowing
rain
spoke to sister again

thought "what is fine I do not sign"

bought fishing line

for bronze mala beads
planted squash seeds

listened to
soil
water boil (yams, eggs for dinner)
men at work
Gerontius
lost in time
returned
after nine
minutes

alopecia

unrecognised

clarity

the wreck

A wreck - it's what we call
this mess of dead and dying,
thousands washed ashore -
after storm,
after life.
It's a strange reckoning,
this careful determinancy.
Will so many lost change things,
upset the balance,
require us
to save lives?


The last week in May saw 3500 dead Puffins wash ashore in Northern Britain. Such massive die-off is not unexpected during a hard spring, and scientists believe it will not affect the stability of the present Puffin population.  Dedicated to all those who have lost their lives in global conflict the last week of May 2013.

frog or toad

first I've seen
on the hosta leaf

striped, still

sister says
listen

does it sing?

mourning cloak - nymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus 1758)

their wings -

black

black

an irregular terminal brightness.

He

waiting 

estivated, overwintered,

first roused

alone. 

she

sunlit, sap fed,

hovers,

hesitant.

they

in this

egg encircled twig.

island too

what surrounds is

island

 flow/ the size of

broken vessel

"Water takes its shape from the container into which it flows, with both good and bad results."

                         - based on the Sakuteiki by Tachibana no Toshitsuna

growing stone

28 may water dream

rain
rain
again

the wet bridge flags
           
as the old man
lifts wood
in his sleep

I regret wine
he sighs

he
places feet
on cloud cumulus

spans solid ground?


thin
waves of

to

bow
is
as
1
0
8
is

adrift

copper hulled
safe from sea worms
float
above
cold fish fjords
ice lipped, strange tree,  there
young squirrel's nest of pear
blossom and branches
spring ahead
but the
the sky
the sky
freezes this
adrift
a sparrow
a warbler
a strange black bird
upon the sea

prairie grass burns quick and hot
high as, higher than a woman

thought of Nebraska
an endless sea of green

I live
insular
3-6 months a year.
So many days and nights away
among strangers and friends.
New streams found,
unfamiliar fields
of light and darkness.

Yesterday, looking out
the studio, I saw a
song sparrow.

She clung to the screen,
looking in.

It's spring.

Am I digging up roots
or planting them?

1000 boats

losing you
as 1000 boats
float
away.

3 thrown holy things

3 holy things thrown together
the fern curl of an Irish crozier
Egyptian baptismal ladle
a buddha from Swat

not

unexpected

this
desire to reinvent
another's sacredness

linguistic numbers

13000 years BCE
24?
swadesh says
241
215
or
206.
Then taken down
pared to
100.
Lately screened, scrimmed
to
35,
perhaps even an odd 23.

23?
24?
No more?

a common language

we
I
you
know what fire
words give

bury
spit
in ashes

bury
man woman
child
under
them

those ashes.
those words.
so many, so many.

bell beakers

this
sings
rings

sound
bowl
cup

up
from earth