Awakening
Not, What’s in it for me? but, How can I help? says the rain to the earth. . [ 1594 ]
Not, What’s in it for me? but, How can I help? says the rain to the earth. . [ 1594 ]
afternoon sun / the first ripe apple / and an oven to bake it in . [ 1581 ]
O dear raindrop, tell me, what was it like to land on the Buddha’s tongue? . [ 1571 ]
raindrops cricket rhythm night and day and breath and pause . [ 1549 ]
Late yesterday evening a very active thunderstorm passed through this part of the valley, moving northwest from the Cascades, bringing with it a spectacular display of lightning and enough thunder to wake the dead. And yet somehow, I fell asleep before it was over — but not before I heard the music of heavy rain landing on the roof and on the plants outside. That, and being generally exhausted from […]
I go on reading things in Emerson’s journal he thought would never see print. And yet here they are, more than a century and a half later, and so here is Emerson. Almost word for word, I remember many things said by my grandparents. And so here they are. Friends, parents, relatives, animals, places, here they are, to be forgotten and remembered for however long. And here we are. Glaciers. […]
Warm days, clear nights. The junco babies are frantic with hunger, and keeping both of their parents busy bringing food to the nest. The early-morning watering ceremony continues. Frantic, yes — but when evening comes all grows quiet and the birds sleep through the night, their tiny bodies resting and growing until dawn wakes them again. Circadian perfection will guide them all of their lives, while we torture and punish […]
This year on Mother’s Day, our eldest son arrived with a large hanging flower basket he bought from someone who’d set up a display on Highway 99E a little north of the town of Corvallis. He’d been hiking and running in the woods near there and was on his way home when the display caught his eye. The man had stuffed just about every plant imaginable into his baskets — […]
So many things live only for a day — flowers, insects, rain, and sometimes people — yet see how different, how strange the world would be without them. Love it all. Never look away. To embrace, rather than resist, the ephemeral nature of sharing one’s thoughts online. Helped, and also haunted by, mechanical memory. The neat, efficient archive (see cemetery rows, honeycomb) is for oneself, for the idle many, the […]