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Posted on by Dave Bonta

Lost & found

Amidst last winter’s restless, unswept ash,
behind the cinder-laden grate, she found
a bird’s nest, tumbledown and skeletal.
It fit exactly in one upturned palm,
its hollow in her hollow. This is mine. . . .

– “Empty Nest,” Paula’s House of Toast

*

How is money made? Money is made through advertising. And how does advertising work? Well, to quote a movie I saw not long ago, advertising entails “thinking up ways to make people feel bad” so that you can sell them something to make them feel better. Advertising depends on the notion that we feel there’s something deeply wrong with us, something lacking, something flawed. We grow up in a society in which we’re taught from day one that we’re not good enough, and will never be good enough, and that we’re empty at our cores.

This is a lie. It’s cruel and deep and dangerous, and it’s a lie. A pervasive one. This lie gets down deep in our core notions of self. Living with this understanding is intolerable. It’s painful. It fucking hurts. And some of us starve to suppress this hurt. Starvation – a constant obsession with food – is far preferable to feeling that aching, howling emptiness. Some of us try to fill the lack in other ways. We eat. We eat. We eat. Some of do both: we start out starving, set on whittling ourselves down to nothing, hell-bent on demonstrating to the world the nothing inside us, but in desperately needing to fill this emptiness, we gorge. And then reempty ourselves.

– Nomen est Numen

*

Now, it is said that a Buddha “generates no karma,” which might sound like it means essentially free of cause and effect (since that’s what karma really means.) But I’m not sure it means that. I think it may only mean that a Buddha’s actions, unlike an ordinary person’s actions, lay him under no future compulsion. A Buddha, you might say, is a person who forms no habits.

If there is a space of freedom — and I’m by no means sure that there is, that the word “freedom” has any real referent — it is not a “freedom of the individual,” but the freedom of understanding that the narrow subset of reality that I usually call “Dale” is in fact not a self-standing limited thing at all, but rather a piece of something infinitely spacious, changing, interconnected, & interwoven. The desperation I feel when “having no freedom” seems like an awful thing is actually the desperation I feel at the prospect of being trapped as my own self-conception forever — which is indeed a terrifying thought. But a delusory one. I can’t be trapped into being “Dale” forever. I’m not even “Dale” now :-)

– Dale, in a must-read comment box at the cassandra pages

*

The more I read about this case, the more I am struck by this sense of identity being experiential rather than intrinsic – that it is not our bodies, but what is done to them, not our teeth, but the cement used to fix them, that will identify us. I also feel sadness that dental cement is more unique than the tooth – that I could dig through a whole pile of bones and never recognize them, were it not for a crack or fissure or scar, the chemical composition of an adhesive, the sheer dumb luck that such an adhesive could be new or rare.

That we have to be broken to be restored.

– evidentiary: alchemy

*

When asked the wherabouts of a lost item, my husband’s grandmother would often say it’s probably down in the cellar behind the ax.
I think translated it meant don’t bother me with that, go look for it yourself.

I like that saying. I don’t actually have an ax in my basement but I love the thought that all the things I’m searching for just might be behind one.

– behindtheax

*

If you want to know a place, to really know the place, you have to live there and die there and give your elements back to the soil there and let the stink of your decomposition lift to the sky there.

We are just tourists, that National Geographic writer and I – and we should be a little more courteous. Because we can write, because we can write about this place, that gives us no proprietary rights. In fact, all we are doing is borrowing, and what we are borrowing we ought to treat well.

– The Middlewesterner

A Franciscan Travel Blessing

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers,
half truths and superficial relationships
so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice,
oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may wish for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

– Ditch the Raft

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Buteo jamaicensis

As I sat back in my chair reading the blogs late yesterday afternoon, it occurred to me suddenly that for my houseplants, summer is the darkest time of year. The Norfolk Island pine sitting across the table from me – the Jack McManis tree – has filled out tremendously in the past few months as its branches reach ever farther in search of light. Since the trees and bushes closest to the house are mostly deciduous – mulberry, lilac, spicebush, black walnut – they intercept much of the sunlight for the six months between mid-May and mid-October. In winter, not only is this impediment removed, but – another counter-intuitive thought – the lower angle of the sun makes for more direct sunlight, even if there is less of it each day. Combine that with the reflective qualities of snow, and this room in particular can become easily twice as bright during the darkest months.

It’s almost like a Daoist parable, isn’t it? Inside or out, the plants are the same in nature, they want the same things. Just as a dog at the genetic level may be all but indistinguishable from a wolf – but when the two meet, the former tends to end up in the latter’s stomach. In each case, the originally arbitrary division of Nature into an inside and an outside creates opposing interests. Might this be equally true of the body and the soul, I wonder?

Empty truism, Dave! Yeah, I know. But I am fascinated by the role that wildness – the Big Outside – and wild animals play in the formation of our identities as fully human beings.

I accompany my mother this morning on her weekly visit to the Amish farmstand and whole foods store in the valley. Which is lucky, because it turns out that the torrential downpour of the night before last had brought down a tree across the Plummer’s Hollow road, a smallish red maple. (Mom’s weak back prevents her from doing things like operating a chainsaw.) In a couple of places, the road is washed out to a depth of 8-10 inches, and we are thankful for the extra clearance the s.u.v. provides.

It’s a spectacular Autumn day. We drive slowly along the winding township roads, enjoying the views whenever there’s a break in the ranks of field corn. At the store, we notice a flyer on the counter – “Lost Falcon.” My mom talks about this for a few minutes with the proprietor, her friend S. – a woman in late middle age, unmarried and very bright. They both know the falconer. S. mentions that one of her grandnephews saw – he thought – a large bird flapping over with “traces dangling from his claws.” The falconer came out to look, but with no luck. “I think if I was a bird like that, once I escaped I’d fly away and I wouldn’t come back,” S. says in her precise English as she heads back into the kitchen.

She would, too – neither of us have any doubt of it. The lyrics of the very un-Amish gospel song “I’ll Fly Away” begin to percolate through my mind.

On the way back up the hollow, I catch the flash of wings from several hundred yards away. When we pull even with the spot, I see the profile of a hawk’s head against the trunk of one of the largest red oaks in the hollow. We back up for a better view, and find ourselves in a staring contest with a red-tailed hawk. Buteo jamaicensis: our most common hawk, but always a pleasure to watch – especially from such unexpectedly close quarters. Its species name reflects the fact that the type specimen was collected in Jamaica; any other connection between this individual and the island currently in the crosshairs of Hurricane Ivan is strictly metaphorical. Most of our red-tails don’t migrate even as far as the gulf coast, and some live here year round. Both last winter and the winter before we had a pair in residence, attracted no doubt by the abundant gray squirrels.

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to fly away?” my mother croons. Talking softly to wild animals is usually a good way to keep them from spooking – it seems almost to mesmerize them, sometimes. But a couple more blandishments and the hawk dips his head, opens his great wings and sails away downhollow. “Ah, an immature,” says my mother, noting the absence of red in his tail. “No wonder he acts so dumb.”

With Frances gone, the air’s about as clear as it ever gets here. The rest of the way up the road, every shifting shadow seems alive with promise.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

In the Golden Age

Even a good person obtains rebirth in the Pure Land; how much more so the evil-doer. People of the world are wont to say, “Even an evil-doer obtains rebirth in the Pure Land; how much more so the good person.” At first glance this seems more reasonable. But in fact it is contrary to the purpose of the Original Vow of Other-Power.
– Shinran, Tannisho

It is not widely acknowledged in the sutras that a bodhisattva may have a strong cynical streak. From the Institute for War and Peace Reporting:

“Then the glorious times of the ‘Golden Age’ came, and my father could no longer manage to feed our large family,” she said, in a bitter reference to the “Golden Age” of prosperity declared by Turkmenistan’s president, Saparmurad Niazov, better known as Turkmenbashi.

“We went hungry. And then a neighbour suggested to my father that he sell his daughter to visitors, and this money would help the family to make ends meet. Despair made my father agree to it. It happened once, and then again and again.

“However, it didn’t help our situation, so I had to move to the capital where there is more demand for women like me and the pay is better. I don’t keep the money I earn — I send it home for my brothers and sisters.”

I can just barely comprehend how a mother might sell herself to provide for her children, as another woman interviewed for this story said she does. But for a teenaged girl to risk disease and death and undergo daily humiliation in order to provide for her siblings strikes me as beyond heroic. And yet I know there are tens of thousands of young women like Amantach the world over. Whenever I hear the phrase “family values,” I think of this.

I’m sure I don’t need to dwell on the horrible injustice, how women in male-dominated societies are expected to sacrifice themselves for others. (“One day I will kill myself,” says the mother.) And you could certainly argue – as I might argue myself – that idealizing these women, likening them to bodhisattvas, only compounds the wrong that is being done to them. They are real, suffering human beings.

But in gassho we evil-doers all come to give ourselves up. Only the power of a pure intention, an undeserved grace, can save us. In gassho . . .

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Love apples

They lie overtop one another, intertwining with abandon. Some vines climb the buddleia bushes, while others stretch down the stone wall toward the driveway. Three of the four volunteer seedlings I transplanted from the compost pit in early June are bearing cherry-sized fruit, and new spots of orange and red appear among their tangled greenery morning and afternoon with astonishing profligacy. From where I sit, I can look over the top of my computer to a window shelf full of tomatoes I just picked an hour ago, with their parent plants visible through the window beyond. Especially with all the rain we’ve been having, few of them would make it to dead ripeness on the vine without attracting the covetous attention of pillbug, slug or hungry chipmunk.

Seedlings that sprouted in the compost pit since I removed the first wave of volunteers have flourished, too. On the upper side, growing out of the low rock wall surrounding Fort Garbage – as my dad calls it – the most successful of these volunteers is birthing fist-sized tomatoes right down among the rotting melon rinds, coffee grounds, corn shucks, and – yes – freshly discarded tomato parts. On my way up to the main house this morning, I plucked two that had almost reached full ripeness, marveling at the festive melange of growth and decay.

That particular plant hides its fruit in the pit for a reason: its upper branches were stripped by a deer or woodchuck a couple of weeks ago. There haven’t been any such depredations since, however. The leaves aren’t exactly palatable, and I imagine whoever chomped on them suffered severe stomach cramps for hours. Not for nothing are tomatoes called love apples!

Before truck-farming Amish moved into the neighboring valley about twelve years ago, we kept huge vegetable gardens, most of which had to be fenced against the animals. Only squash, tomatoes and potatoes could be grown without any protection other than a good hay mulch. One of the things I really liked about tomatoes was the way that, given a steady supply of chicken manure and hay, they could happily inhabit the very same spot year after year. We started seedlings indoors in February, but feral volunteers would quite often outstrip the tender transplants. It was always exciting to see what kind of fruit they’d bear, since we grew so many varieties.

Perhaps it says something about our lax approach to gardening that we could almost depend on volunteers. But at the peak of tomato season, it’s impossible to keep ahead of the flood. My mother used to can close to a hundred quarts a year, and we boys still found enough rotten ones to turn the otherwise dull job of harvesting into juicy warfare.

And now, again, that red flood is in full spate. Boxes of tomatoes can be had from the Amish for a few dollars each. The super-sweet cherry tomatoes from my herb/butterfly garden vie with the Macintosh apples in my fridge for my attention at snack time (which for me is pretty much all the time). We dry some, but otherwise just gorge, slicing tomatoes into sandwiches and salads, adding them to almost every dish. And what don’t tomatoes go well with? For ’tis the season too for basil, cilantro, eggplant, zucchini, peppers . . . a hundred variations on a half-dozen themes.

*

Like the potato, the tomato is a native of South America. So what did Italians eat before they had tomatoes? They ate lots and lots of eggplant, apparently. Here’s a simple oven dish of Mediterranean provenance that you could make without tomatoes – but I’m not sure why you’d want to.

Dave’s Vaguely Greek Eggplant and Black Pepper Casserole

Saute together over medium heat:
1/4 c olive oil
2 medium onions, diced
1 large sweet pepper, diced
1 medium eggplant, chopped
In my opinion, eggplant is like tofu: more or less tasteless by itself, but good for sopping up and retaining whatever oils and juices you cook it with. So use good olive oil, and err on the side of generosity!

Add and cook ten more minutes, still on medium heat, until eggplants start to break down:
2 large tomatoes, chopped
1 t salt
up to 1 full t ground black pepper, depending on freshness (and your own tolerance)
optional fresh herbs, especially thyme (I’d be cautious with rosemary or parsley here, though. Black pepper in such quantities admits of few competitors.)

Chuck everything into a 3-qt casserole dish and pour the custard overtop:
1/2 c milk
1/2 c cottage cheese
2 egg yolks

Bake covered at 375 (F.) for 45 minutes. Serve with fresh corn on the cob and a green salad topped with fresh tomatoes.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Worm verse

Continuing the invertebrate theme from yesterday, I thought I’d try my hand at worm verse. This is an invention of Ivy Alvarez. As she explained back on July 29,

I had this idea that I was talking out and working aloud with my s.o., about a chapbook of poems composed mostly of median letters.

You know, those letters that live in the middle, that don’t have tops [b, d, f, h, i, j, k, l, t] nor tails [g, j, p, q and y]. The worms of a c e m n o r s u v w x z.

How clean they look! How streamlined!

And quite surprising how many letters there are. And these are choice letters. You can do a lot with these, I thought. And you know, poets love a challenge. Well, some do.

Not satisfied with this restriction, however, she

bred it together with the hay(na)ku form, created by Eileen Tabios (a.k.a The Chatelaine), and described on the Hay(na)ku website as “a tercet where the first line consists of one word, the second line of two words, and the third line of three words”.

Some of Ivy’s recent efforts are here (scroll down for all three days’ worth). One favorite:

can
we ever
rename our summers

never
nor can
we romance names

I’ve never been too concerned about the look of poems on the page (or screen). What interests me about writing with only a few letters is that one can focus entirely on groping for sense and let alliteration and assonance take care of themselves. To be fully wormy, I think, one should follow Ivy’s example and eschew all punctuation (except perhaps for dashes and periods), a rule I was unable to stick to.

worm

worm
unmans me,
scours some vacuum.

zoom –
no more
raceme. no manners.

waxen
women swoon
over warm sermons,

murmur
more raves.
so are we

zeros,
mere error,
a nacreous sum?

onion,
muse, we
serve an ovum.

no
roman urn
amazes me more.
__________

So go ahead, try this at home. (And feel free to litter my comment boxes with the results!)

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Slug 2

I just bethought myself to go look in An Ark for the Next Millennium, a bilingual book of poems by the Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco (University of Texas Press, 1991), translated by Margaret Sayers Peden from Pacheco’s Album de Zoología. Nuts, Pacheco beat me to it! Not only that, his piece, “Fisiología de la babosa/Physiology of the Slug” is superior to my prose poem (below) in almost every way, and it even ends with a similar image: “It fears/(with reason)/someone will come/and over his shoulder throw salt on it”.

Unfortunately, the poem has multiple, deep indents, which would be very tiresome to reproduce in HTML. But I’d like to quote the first half of the poem anyway, as run-on text, because it seems highly relevant to a post of elck’s today, on the subject of earthly paradise. I’ll give the Spanish first, followed by Peden’s English.

“La babosa/animal sutil/se recrea/en jardines impávidos/Tiene humedad de musgo/acuosidad/de vida a medio hacerse/Es apenas/un frágil/caracol en proyecto/como anuncio/de algo que aún no existe//En su moroso edén de baba/proclama/que andar por esto mundo/significa/ir dejando/pedazos de uno mismo/en el viaje…”

“The slug/a subtle creature/amuses itself/in indifferent gardens/It is moist like moss/aqueous/like life half-lived/It is little more/than a fragile/shell-in-the-making/like a notice/of something that does not yet exist//In its sluggish, slimy Eden/it proclaims/that to pass through this world/means/to leave/bits of oneself/on the journey…”

“In its morose Eden of slime” (to be a bit more literal about it) – what a delightful line! I admit I still feel some affection for my own conceit of an artist’s or hitchhiker’s thumb. But it is emblematic, perhaps, of my more superficial approach. Pacheco’s slug is no more faithful to the biological “reality” of slugs than mine is, but somehow it manages to say something essential about the world we all inhabit, while my slug remains a narcissist on a quest for artificial highs and illusory utopias. ¡Pobrecito!

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Slug

Apotheosis of all that is low, vile, vagrant, whose taste for midnight gardens is notorious, hermaphrodite whose weakness for warm beer can lead to a fatal love-match with his own reflection: how to dress him up, this poor relation to that clan of seafaring and treeclimbing gastropods so tantalizing to the French palate? The stubborn pride with which the slug unrolls his tatterdemalion carpet is inexplicable. He lacks the most basic accoutrements of a decent mollusk lifestyle: no mother-of-pearl dressing room, no spiral staircase, no simple-yet-elegant home to inspire the likes of Le Corbusier. Nothing, in short, to bequeath to a museum bell jar.

Clearly, all attempts at rehabilitation fail to lift the slug above his freakish role as dead ringer for a hitchhiker’s thumb, and come up against the stubborn delusion that he was once the understudy to some obscure artist, measuring for a comprehensive sketch of the face of a salt-free earth.