WW: Battered but not beaten

(I made this fudo [look left; hanging from the bell] in 2009, for friends in Spokane County. When I took care of their farm for a few weeks 6 years later, I posted a photo of it here. It was still looking pretty smart then, all things considered.

On a visit last month I noted that 16 years' continuous duty in the desert hadn't done it any favours. But given the conditions, the old warrior still serves our patron well.)

WW: Big fudo rings

(Here are a few of the largest rings I've collected for making fudos. [Among those not yet deployed, of course.] Most of the malleable washers came off the beach, wrenched from the wreckage of docks and shoreworks cast up by storms over the years. Their condition betrays particular power. Note as well a rare wooden ring.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Fudo City

This is Nicola White, my favourite mudlark. (Yes, I have a favourite mudlark. I also have other mudlarks, who, while not my favourite mudlark, are also brilliant. If you don't have a favourite mudlark, what are you even doing?)

Ordinarily I unspool a mudlark video here and there for a bit of exotic foreign beachcombing. Because the seaweed is always greener on the far side of the planet. And let me tell you, us New Worlders are missing out; what Nicola finds in the Thames – midtown London, mind you – is better than anything I'll find in the North Pacific, ever.

But that's just the inescapable luck of the draw. Consider, for example, that I'd rather not dig clams there. Some things you got, some things you ain't. (Second Noble Truth, with a worldly-dharma chaser.)

But this one drove me mad. I'm talking physical pain. Because this time, my girl Nicola outed me as a bad monk, a self-righteous Buddhist, and a very strange man.

It starts about 1:40 – the video opens at that mark when you click on it – where, if you look carefully at the mud... you'll see a washer.

An old, rusty, well-abused washer.

The sort that makes a first-class fudo.

And boy, does that trigger my greed! You can see it right there. It's within reach. The camera places you right behind the hand. "It's right there! Just right! No, don't pan away!"

But that happens a lot in mudlarking videos. What is less common, happens next.

Another one. Just as good and just as near.

Then another. And another.

I counted at least half a dozen before Nicola wandered on, for a total of about a minute and a half of torment. And God knows how many other rings lie just out of frame.

Needless to say, she walks right past all of them. Because she's after, like, actual stuff. Interesting stuff. Thought-provoking stuff she can use in her artwork. (That's what Nicola is: an artist.)

So she doesn't need a pack of rusty washers.

She's probably got enough of those to hold the duration.

But if you're a fudo maker, that dreggy hardware shines, if only metaphorically, right off the gloomy muck. (Looking remarkably like ours, come to that. Amazing how similar the UK is to the North Coast.)

I'm telling you, that's powerful iron. Those guys contain enough disdain for suffering, each one, to make Mara incontinent for days.*

And I could reach out and take them, if my arms were 5,000 miles longer.

You're killing me here, Nicola.

*MaraisnotrealpleasedonotascribesufferingoreviltoasupernaturalbeingcalledMaraMaraisjustallegoryfordelusionformoreinformationpleasesitzazen.

WW: Beach fudo ring

(Latest addition to my fudo-making stocks. I will cut this large, well-rusted washer off the bolt with an angle grinder.)

WW: Bike fudo

(Made this one for a local bike path, using some hardware I got from a shop in town.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Cemetery fudo

(Eight-strand kongo kumihimo in funerary white, red, and
black on a joss coin ring. Hung in a stand of bamboo.)

WW: Kitty fudo

(This is a funerary fudo I made for a cat friend of mine. [The cord is white, red, and black, the three bardos of death.] She was buried here in the woods a few months ago.)

UFO Sighting

When I started writing Rusty Ring, away back in 2011 CE, one of the first fellow bloggers I connected with was the keeper of WillTaft.com, a site dedicated to environmental and lifestyle issues. I don't remember who found whom first, but for a while there much ping was ponged between our fora, as each made regular appearances in the other's comment sections.

And then Will stopped blogging. The Internet is an object lesson in Zen; what's here today is gone tomorrow, and by gone I mean "vanished as if it had never existed." As do all things, of course, but online the effect is instantaneous; whereas the analog world generally offers a cushion of time to watch things fall apart and process the changes, the Enlightenment Superpath blanks everything, immediately.

Anyway, Will's blog is still up and worth a visit, but hasn't been updated for some time now.

Which is why the message I received from him this week was especially exhilarating.

"Believe it or not,"

wrote Will,

"after all these years, I still occasionally read your blog. Even more of a 'believe it or not', I still make and hang fudos when I place a geocache and sometimes when out on a hike. So I guess my comment musing on this post many years ago, wondering if my initial attraction would remain intact, turned out to be yes.

"Anyway I thought of you a few days ago when on a hike with my daughter and we came across the fudo in the attached photo. It certainly does not compare to the ones you create or even the ones I put out, but what else could it be?

"I choose to believe that it is what it seems and as it is the first one I have ever encountered put out by someone other than me, I found it strangely moving.

"Below that photo is a picture where, if you look closely, you can see one of the fudos I hung while on a hike several years ago, still surviving well. [See end of this post – ed.]"

Everything works about that email. First, I heard from Will, about whom I have often thought in the intervening years. Second, he's still making and hanging fudos. And third, marvellously, we have evidence – however tenuous – that someone else may be trekking the mountains of Oregon, tagging trail for the Good Guys.

Will's right. Check out that photo; unless it's been Photoshopped, that's a fair-dinkum Unidentified Fudo Object. Why else would someone hang a rusty ring in a tree?

Let's just say that, while it wants substantiation, this may yet be a sign of intelligent life.

He adds:

"And you know, I have found something in the process of making them in addition to hanging them. I do really hope to come across another put out by someone else someday, as that moved me in a surprising way."

That is also my greatest ambition: to happen upon a fudo I didn't make, nor anyone I know. As it was for Will, such a sight would be deeply emotional.

Any road, as I've often said, I may have few readers, but you're the cream of the crop. This-here is just the latest proof.

(Look carefully; can you see Will's fudo, hung years ago and still on-post?)

WW: 8-strand flat kumihimo

(In the process of making fudos I generate a lot of scrap cordage. When the quantity gets too unmanageable, I knot it together into one long string, cut it into 8 lengths, and spend a week or two braiding up a spool of flat 8-strand kumihimo, to be used to various ends. [No pun intended.]

The photo above is a single 24-foot example, wound on a wooden frame. The braid is about half an inch wide.

If nothing else, this photo demonstrates how much red yarn I use in my fudo practice.)

WW: The ocean giveth

(Latest fudo ring, collected from the beach after a storm.)

WW: Bike iron

(Got this fine haul of fudo rings [many of which are reflecting a rare blue winter sky] from a local bicycle shop. Normally they'd just have thrown these worn-out cogs away, but the mechanics were more than happy to fill a bag for me when I asked. Major score.)

Renewal Practice

"Nothing that's dumb is Buddhist."
Wu Ya.

WW: Square fudo

(100-year model; square ring, representing the Four Noble Truths, i.e. the four walls of the eremitical monastery.)

WW: 12-strand diamond fudo

WW: Ranch rings

(A round dozen of fudo rings collected on a friend's ranch. They're black because I sealed them with rust converter.)

WW: What kind of rings are these?

(Just collected these fudo rings this week. Anybody recognise them?)

Graduation Meditation

I made this fistful of fudos for a friend's daughter who just graduated from high school. Graduation is an odd rite; we tell young people their lives have changed overnight, utterly and irreversibly, and encourage them, by our silence if nothing else, to party like all their problems are over.

We really don't do this in any other context. We celebrate New Year's, we celebrate weddings, we even celebrate graduation from other institutions, but we never say "all is attained!" This already bothered me when I graduated. I get it that we want to emphasise the accomplishment and celebrate the opportunities. I'm for that. But "free at last!" is simply – maybe even tragically – a lie. (As I put it myself all those years ago, the truth is more like: "Responsible at last". But I guess that doesn't look as festive on a cake.)

And now that I'm old, I've noticed something even more sinister: the near-universal insistence of grups that a person knows nothing at 18. Yet people that age are in fact not children. (Neither are 16-year-olds, or even 14-year-olds for that matter, but that's another rant.) I don't know if we do this because it makes us feel inadequate to see these dynamic young adults gallivanting about, or because we still have a retinal image of them in diapers, or maybe we just like wielding power over others. But 18 is grown-up. Newly grown-up, sure. Still in need of counsel, of course. But grown-up. (And let's be honest, homies: that second one never changes.)

Therefore, by way of conceding to this young lady some of the power that's hers by right, I included the following note:

At your age there are a lot of older people telling you that you haven't had any life experience, and therefore you have no wisdom. Now that I'm old, I can tell you that 18 is in fact not as much as 50. (And I'm beginning to suspect there may be numbers even larger than that.) But 18 is still a lot – much more than old people think. (Or maybe just more than they remember; the years take things away, too.) Fact is, I had wisdom at 18 that I've since lost, somewhere along the way.

So here are 18 fudos, one for each year of wisdom you've accrued. Hang them in places that are special to you, or will become special to you later; mark your own trail, blaze it for others who follow; give some to friends and strangers. They're yours to do what you want with.

Remember that the more abused the ring, the more power it has. Just like people. Some of these have added meaning as well. The diamond one recalls the Diamond Sutra. The square one proclaims the Four Noble Truths. The Chinese coin with cord in the colours of the Three Bardos of Death is a cemetery fudo. And the one with the broken ring and four Franciscan knots is my own proprietary design. All fudos say, "The world is full of bastards, but an army of compassionate seekers has your back." Mine adds: "… and they'll have to get through me first."

All peace and good fortune to you, young sister. No time for small minds; eyes on the prize.

Eighteen is enough.

Robin

PS: And if anybody still tries to tell you it's not, tell them you won't hear until they've made 18 fudos. That crap takes forever.

WW: Karma ring

(Found high in the dunes; ancient relic of some wrecked seawall or dockwork. I collected the malleable washer, which is about 3 inches across, to make a fudo.) 

WW: Graveside fudo

(The white, red, and black cord stands for each of the three Tibetan bardos of death. Hung by the grave of a canine friend.)

WW: February fudo

(Twelve-strand kongo Diamond Sutra model.)