Summer in the city.
I’m just going through the day, hot and sunny, blue-sky fine. What else is there to do?
Somewhere across the Atlantic, Madoff gets 150 years in prison and the talk is still about Michael Jackson. And not just across the ocean. How strange that the saddest man made so many happy. Did he know it, wrapped up and hidden, walking in place?
Like him or not, everywhere this death – because of how it is rippling through our minds – is a forceful reminder of our essential impermanence – white skin or black, thick nose or thin, rich or poor, young or old.
At the last breath, what else is there? What did all that effort come down to? Just the last breath. Always just the last breath, right now. Take it in and let it go.
There will never be another like it.
Life and death in black and white
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
Thanks for your words, Michelange.
No vacation (yet). I will indeed be there Friday night, and Mondays and Fridays until nearly the end of the month.
Lovely text, sensei. Dead on. For me, an american, and in fact, a black american who grew up int the 70s and watched the rise and fall of "Michael", your words are just right.
Just right … His death and your words make me reflect on timing. The great entertainer. Perfect timing. In the end, he organized his destiny to die as a percieved legend, a legend rather than as a freak or a monster. What a showman to have pulled that off, in a media society as bloodthirsty as ours, today, and after all he’s done and has been done to him. What effort he’s given to the practice of "Michael". He’s spent his whole life and death and afterlife maintaining and negotiating this superstar thing at any price and to my great surprise, in the end – he pulled it off, got the last laugh. And so what? So what. In spite of himself, a great teaching.
speaking of teaching, are you sitting with us Friday or are you on vacation?
affectionately,
michelange