Detached. Attached.

It’s good to be both.

Both at the same time.

I had a reheated sweet potato and a cup of black coffee for breakfast.

Halloweeen breakfast.

The owls were talking again, just before dawn yesterday.

Halloween's scary, happy.

Both at the same time.

Pigeon
flaps one wing,
traces circles
in the dust.

Breathe
out
and in
out
and in
give
and get
give
and get
selfless
self
two strong wings
to fly...

...knotty problems often prove to be gateways to scientific breakthroughs...the cleverest scientists are more attracted to vexing questions than to comforting answers.

Timothy Ferris
"Raising Heaven"
National Geographic
November 2007

When we’re kids in the '60s, we buy candy called ‘atomic fireballs’. We’re given gray caps with the Confederate flag emblazoned above the brim. Our Catholic school basketball team is called the Rebels, even as we finally become integrated. Someone waves the big crossed Confederate flag at games.

Today as I practiced yoga on the front porch, the noise of the cars was drowned by the noise of heavy machinery. The highway department was cutting down the trees across the road, each marked with a red paint cross. These were tall trees some of the Mississippi Kites nested in. (Fortunately, the kites have migrated—it’s not nesting season.)

So, I balanced on right foot, then on left, arms extended upward, tree pose, standing tall as the machines chopped the limbs one by one.

There's a stalwart, beautiful oak farther down. It too is marked with a red X. And some weeks back, ‘preparing the dojo’ in our yard, I came upon arrows of orange paint in the grass, marking the line. Our pecan trees soon will be gone.

It’s as though the trees know. They’ve produced an abundance of pecans this their last season. They give us food, shade and grace.

I don’t understand humans. I don’t understand me.

We dull our hearts, our senses.

A friend, who also had a Confederate Army cap when he was a kid, doctored a photo of himself. He replaced the Confederate flag with a yin-yang.




Zurich
19 Sept 2005

Zurich
19 Sept 2005




I was listening to two owls last night.
They sounded so close to my bedroom window.

The deep voiced one,
whoo whoo whoo,
a great horned owl.

The other,
who-who-who-whoo whoo,
higher pitched,
a barred owl.

I’ve heard them both here before, but not at once.

These two talked at the same time, overlapping each other, then taking turns, maybe six calls to the minute.

I listened. It's like when you're a kid, and you're in bed, and you hear your parents' conversation rising and fading. Their voices communicate their nearness to you, even though you can't understand a word.

The owls calmly talked for some time. Then the heater came on, and in its hum, I could no longer hear the owls. I fell asleep.

The moon is so full...

Zurich
19 Sept 2005

Each October in central Texas, starting around the 10th or so, I looked forward to the arrival of monarch butterflies migrating to Mexico. On a clear blue day, they’d appear from over the valley to the north, float high above us, and on toward the southern valley and horizon. So pretty, with such focused intention. Such a journey, and as best we can tell, unplanned, not thought about nor discussed in advance. Do external factors trigger takeoff? Internal factors? There's still debate.

It's crushing to see a monarch hit by a car. A traveler who has clocked 1000 miles already, not to make the destination, but to meet an abrupt end flapping too low over the highway, struggling perhaps against an air current from the south.

On optimal days, they fly so high they can’t be seen until sunset approaches when they gradually lose altitude as they hunt for a resting spot for the night. We’d go for walks in the cool glowing early evening light, and there would be butterflies, like little planes, gliding in for landing.

I thought last year, leaving Texas for good at the beginning of October, I'd have no opportunity to see that season's migrants. But, after I visited one son in Memphis and started heading west, crossing Oklahoma and Kansas, there they were. Perfect timing, the week before they would reach Austin, one after the other coming from my right, and floating onward to the left. Alone in my car, I felt allied with the butterflies. We weren’t heading for the same place, but perhaps we shared the instinct for fall flight, the same urgency.

This year, there was no chance at all of witnessing the fliers, right? But I didn't count on travel. I spent a weekend near Deerfield, Massachusetts at a Shintaido workshop. During the warm-ups of the first class, I gazed upward and froze. Two monarchs sailed above the broad field, their distinctive way of flight, their orange and black pane-glass beauty unmistakable.

How could that be? Today, I checked a website sent to me that shows this year’s migration:
http://tinyurl.com/ytdmt3

It seems again I ended up in the thick of the migration, just much nearer the northeastern origin.

Did those two monarchs over the dojo make it as far as central Texas? Have they reached Mexico yet?

I mean—it took me two airplanes to get back just this far from Massachusetts. Those guys were winging it on their own-no engines, no petroleum products, no complimentary beverages-with much farther to go. Doesn't that just blow you away?

With some luck and a good norther or two, perhaps as I type, they're hanging on to a tree trunk on a mountainside in Mexico…





BTW, here’s the url to a lovely monarch photo taken by my friend Janis:
http://janisherdphoto.com/p739669543/?photo=h3A1061EF#974152175

Black beans. I felt rich...

A stranger whispers
Stand by Me
a hand’s width from my ear;
Orion catches
shooting light, stars'
weightless laughter;
a plaintive mewling in the dark
a small dish now licked clean;
the wind has shifted in the night
Benevolence passing near...

'I can't stress enough the importance of having a trigger to start the downswing. A trigger provides a consistent way to ignite the sequence of movements and unlock the power stored in your right side...

'Muscle memory allows everything...to flow naturally...

'Unlike the pros, most amateurs start the downswing with their shoulders, arms or hands, producing an over-the-top move. By starting down with your lower body, you let the shoulders and arms work from inside the target line, which is a much more powerful move.'

Tiger Woods
Golf Digest
November 2007

My mother just chanted herself to sleep. Five hours after wishing desperately to fall asleep.

Such a long day for her, ordering new sitters to get out of her house. And NEVER EVER come back. Fighting a sponge bath. Ordering us to get her grits. An egg. More juice NOW please. Just one egg. Jello. Jello please. Jello. Jello please. Jello. Can I have my hamburger now? Hamburger, PLEASE. My bed is wet. Why are you hurting me? You're hurting my BACK. Stop. STOP. Just one egg. Where's my egg? Egg now PLEASE.

And still she could not rest.

My high school French teacher was at an alumnae event tonight. She reminisced about touring France and Italy on a motorcycle—must have been around 1960. She told me and another alum about a brother-in-law here who took up painting at 45. Who spent nine months farming, three traveling each year. She then told me he’d formerly been a photographer during World War II, has all of these beautiful black and white photos he took in Japan covering the walls of his house.

So I told her about Shintaido. Martial arts for peace. She asked me if I’d visited the Peace Museum in Caen, then told me there is a similar Peace Museum in New Orleans. Plan on several hours to go through just one section. Her eyes teared up and she said visiting the museum is emotionally heavy. All of these people recounting their experiences from the war. She recommended I drive to New Orleans to see it one day if I can take a break.

Sitting next to me was the young woman, another alumna, whom I’d just met. She’s thinking of trying Shintaido. She'd be my student.

Sometimes things just fall together.

I’ve never heard of a peace museum before.

The young sitter with me and my mom, her mother died at 64. Diabetes. Both legs amputated not long before she died.

The sitter's son wanted candy apple at the Rice Festival today.

My mother is asleep.

'"This is about bringing ideas into the CSU and starting a discussion,"
[Gabriele Pauli] told German television...after she had unleashed a wave
of criticism from other politicians.

Former foe Stoiber said she did not belong in the CSU and European
lawmaker Ingo Freidrich dismissed her views.

"She is diametrically contradicting our Christian, ethical values,"
Freidrich said.

Peter Ramsauer, head of the CSU in Germany's parliament, compared
Pauli's ideas to "the dirt under your fingernails."'

What was Pauli's controversial idea? Seven-year marriages.

I don't know. She made me think...



From an article by Madeline Chambers
Fri Sep 21, 4:00 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters)

'Just for the record: The Buddhist term "dukkha," (Sanskrit) is typically translated as "suffering," but this doesn't do justice to the term, which would better be translated as "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"...'
-Eva Thaddeus

From a comment in a blog called Retying Knots:
http://mt.shintaido.org/archives/000044.html

There's a difference between imagining light and awareness of light. See like a painter or photographer...see like a child...

Is to teach a sweater added, or a layer removed?

A gecko here in Louisiana on the first of this month. Not as transparent as the ones near Austin, but you get the idea. Above with flash, below without.

I did leave in the darkness and find a friend. Many friends, a few splendid bruises, and a lotta lotta love.

It’s good when you’re in a big tangle to find a temporary sub for your responsibilities and seek respite and perspective and maybe even fun for a few days. It can be good for everyone involved.

Things may not change on the home front, but you will…

with uncertain gait
she comes this way
red rose
on white snow
she walks away

"Reach out in the darkness, and you may find a friend..."

A hamburger fetched
hold the onions;
My father
steadfast and loyal.

I said to myself this afternoon, I need a sign. I don’t want any cutesy, vague signs that’ll leave me still in doubt. I need to know this time I’m doing right. I need a clear indication, go or no go.

The universe was kind to me.

I mean the universe is already good-humored overall. The day after I wrote about Leo Kottke, including his 6- and 12- string guitar album, out came the only live armadillo I’ve seen all year. And not in the distance—it came trotting in from an adjacent property as I was practicing Shintaido, ran right toward me, stopped five feet away, then headed under the house. Of course the old Leo Kottke recording is known as the armadillo album because of the picture on the cover.

Then there’s the night I met a new relative, a week before I was heading for Switzerland. The only reason I was going to Switzerland was that I had a friend living there who wanted me to visit. I knew almost nothing about the country. I had no plans except for one thing I’d heard of that drew me: the monks of Einsiedeln who every afternoon for many centuries have sung their Gregorian chants. I knew I would make a side trip there.

Turns out the relative’s wife is from Switzerland. Also, he was writing a collection of autobiographical short stories and the cover photo would be a little girl under the oak tree that was the center of his childhood world. I didn’t tell him, I don’t know why, but in the folder I’d brought with me to the restaurant, right there and then, I had a bit of branch from the very oak tree he was talking about. I’d picked it up from the ground after a rain storm when I was visiting Lafayette one year. And he didn’t tell me then, but he and his wife had married in Einsiedeln in the late 1940s, in the church where the monks do their chant.

It’s been a rough week for me and everyone around me. There are strong pros and cons in both directions, my desire ambivalent because what good is an outing if you’re likely to feel guilty the whole time.

Today, there were no animals or oak trees pointing the way. Instead, an unexpected phone call. I didn’t ask, but my aunt said very distinctly, go.

One song’s
soaring openness:
I’m typing
the litany
of 70 happinesses-
the dance
of 70 cranes-
the scent
of 70 oranges-
(Rufus Wainwright
the magic key)
an unusual miracle
this hot hot shirt-
ah, the strange radar
of love from afar-
R U happy
the spam mail asks
maybe
I’m alive