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mars 2009

One breath

By | 2015-10-02T14:29:10+00:00 mars 17th, 2009|Textes|

In the morning paper, a headline on an article about the tenor Plácido Domingo: Singing every day as if it were the last Every day IS the last, every song the last and best. Domingo said he would end his fabulous career by simply one evening after a performance saying, That's it! And so it [...]

Always something and nothing

By | 2015-10-02T14:29:37+00:00 mars 11th, 2009|Textes|

All these days without words now end. Having been sick, there were other things to do. Of course, there is always someone who is sick and always someone who is not. There is always something to do and always nothing to do. And from a friend comes a link to this brief encounter with Robert [...]

Unraveling in the Meanwhile

By | 2017-04-04T06:58:21+00:00 mars 4th, 2009|Textes|

Tonight, with words, I construct a diagram of what I experience: the quiet of night deepening, a full stomach, voices in sharp discussion in the street. Language is the form, words the shape, the signs and symbols we have all agreed indicate one thing. In fact, I am only an image, a drawing, as Yves [...]

Reality bleeds

By | 2015-10-02T14:30:35+00:00 mars 2nd, 2009|Textes|

I read today that Hemingway said writing is not difficult; you just have to sit down at the typewriter and bleed. Like the Third Patriarch of Zen said of the "perfect" way: It, too, is not difficult; it just dislikes picking and choosing. Looking around all day and into night, imperfection abounds, limitless: Sunlight fades, [...]

février 2009

Connected

By | 2015-10-02T14:31:14+00:00 février 28th, 2009|Textes|

After 24 hours without my regular Web connection, a pre-Internet Age experience seems now to have ended. I have no understanding of why it was off then or why it is on now. And I have nothing theological to say about it. Gave it little thought except for fretting a bit about a missed online [...]

Ocean and office day

By | 2017-04-04T06:58:21+00:00 février 25th, 2009|Textes|

This morning, early, as I emerge from underground onto the tony avenue where I spend my office days, the light is clearly growing brighter and stronger with the season. Behind the Arc de Triomphe stretches a bold swath of pink sky. It's gone when I pass again hours later. But spring is irrefutably near. Crossing [...]

Stand up right here

By | 2015-10-02T14:32:45+00:00 février 20th, 2009|Textes|

So much to do all week left me without words here. I was plunged, however, into Walt Whitman's joyous word cosmos: All truths wait in all things, he wrote. Like Shunryu Suzuki, who said: Wherever you are, enlightenment is there. If you stand up right where you are, that is enlightenment. And now I stand [...]

Calling all bad girls

By | 2015-10-02T14:33:14+00:00 février 15th, 2009|Textes|

A friend tells me of an expression in German that translates as, Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. Reminds me of a line from a Talking Heads song, Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. And now what's happening? Here? What place is this? And who is here? I smell garlic [...]

The last word before sunrise

By | 2015-10-02T14:33:45+00:00 février 12th, 2009|Textes|

Before sunrise this morning, wind sends wispy clouds scurrying across the gray sky. Yet the trees are nearly still. Later, in Gateless Gate, Case 13, Ganto whispers in old master Tokusan's ear. The master, we are told, is satisfied and silent. What, then, is the last word of Zen?