WW: Full moon over the bay

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: All kinds of stars

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Jack o' lantern 2022

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Poem: Misunderstanding

Standing in the driveway, staring at the rising moon
My neighbor thought I was staring at her.
Awkward.

– a fellow Zen hermit on Twitter, channeling Issa.


(Photo courtesy of Aaron Tait and Wikimedia Commmons.)

WW: Bedtime

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Gratitude Kyôsaku

"All you single people who think you'd be happy if you were married, ask a married person.

"All you married people who think you'd be happy if you were single, ask a single person."

Ajahn Brahm


("Korean thanksgiving day night [Fractal art]" (sic) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Okanogan moonrise

Anatta

Yesterday upon the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

I wish, I wish he’d go away

When I came home last night at 3

The man was waiting there for me

But when I looked around the hall

I couldn’t see him there at all!

Go away, go away
Don’t you come back any more!

Go away, go away
And please don’t slam the door

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away

Hughes Mearns

Antigonish (1899)

Enlightenment Kyôsaku

Why chatter about enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

Ryokan



(Photo of woodblock print Night Rain at Oyama, by 二代目 歌川豊国 [Utagawa Toyokuni II], courtesy of William Pearl and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: January evening

WW: Beach fires

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WW: St. John's by night

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WW: Moonrise over sage hills

Hermitcraft: Rushlight (Candle Lantern)

Every hermit needs a rushlight. It's a meditation candle, a trail light, and general illumination where there is no electricity. I made this one before I went into the woods last summer, and it served daily and well.

As you can see, this is bindle technology: a tin can with holes punched in. (I used a power drill for cleaner, more uniform holes.) Ordinarily you'd shift every other hole column up half a space, so that its holes are midway between those in adjacent columns. This maximises light and conserves metal strength. For even more strength, make the staggered holes smaller.

That said, you'll note that this rushlight has slits instead of staggered columns. I cut them with an angle grinder, thinking I'd get more light. And I did, but I probably won't do it again; the slit sometimes focuses a beam straight into my pupil when I meditate, forcing me either to endure it or break posture and poke the lantern with my monk stick. And a few minutes later it rotates back and lasers me again. A hole can only do this until the flame burns past it, but a slit can pester you all night.

Worse still is the metal lost; with ten full-length cut-outs, this rushlight crushes easily in my pack. The situation is not helped by the fact that both holes and slits go all the way to the bottom. This is overkill; both should stop about two inches up. The extras don't give much more light for the removed metal, and they leak wax that might otherwise extend candle life.

It's a fine design for home, though. The bottom tray is a candy tin cover I added after I came out of the woods, to catch run-outs. These aren't a disaster outdoors, though messy and wasteful, but unconfined dripping is a deal-breaker inside.

The tray also makes the rushlight much more stable when standing, which is otherwise a concern. The rubber feet (see photo below) were cut with a half-inch gouge from a tire I found on the beach, and attached with Gorilla Glue. They grip surfaces and eliminate marring. The tray does prevent me from stuffing the lantern into a pack pocket, but the detachable upgrade won't be a hard brainstorm.

I used hoarded notebook wire for the bail, because it's cheap, heatproof, and easily worked. The bail must be long enough to carry the light without burning your hand, and to hang without setting the support on fire. You'll also need a mesh cover (not pictured) outdoors to keep insects out. This is not just good karma; the dead will otherwise catch fire, inciting the chain reaction described in the next paragraph.

Possible complications include drowning wicks, blow-out, and worst of all, the Volcano of Atonement: molten wax breaks through the rim of the pool, cuts a channel that prevents a new one from forming, and the whole thing melts down in a single gushing flare. At best you're left with a cinder cone of wax and utter darkness. Other times you set the forest on fire, producing more light than is ideal for meditation.

Therefore, always keep your rushlight in view when you sit outdoors. I like to hang it just above and to one side of my field of vision in lotus. That way I can check it just by shifting my eyes.


A final note: there's a small trick to carrying one of these. If you just, like, carry it, the unshielded flame blinds you till all you see is it, surrounded by a giant doughnut of pitch black. If walking around with a tractor inner tube around your waist isn't your idea of safe navigation in a dark forest, turn your palm upward, slip your index finger through the loop in the bail, and carry it that way, hara-high. (See photo below.) That way your hand blocks the direct light, saving your eyes for the rest. For improved effect, carry something else in that hand as well, like a book or folded handkerchief.

In another post I've illuminated (sorry, couldn't resist) a cheap and easy method for making the candles that go inside. There are also plenty of storebought ones that fit. Just slide one in, whatever the provenance, and banish the darkness.

Not bad for stuff you were gonna throw out, eh?

(Adapted from 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson.)

WW: Night on Capitol Hill

WW: November night

WW: Demons in the driveway

WW: October night

Monsters

Night filled me with dread.

That the world turned black, leaving windows like sheets of obsidian against which my little brother's face resembled something my reptilian cortex clearly remembered, was bad enough. Beyond lay strange noises, cries of marauding wolves and phantom babies that grown-ups dismissed as dogs and cats.

But the worst was the bed. There, I lay alone and unarmed, swaddled in flannel and bound in bedclothes. In such a state, I was completely vulnerable. I had no clear idea what might happen, but it was awful, and certain.

Interesting now to think that I once feared the dark. Growing, I came to prize the cover of night: the protection of a nocturnal forest, the kindness of a dark room. But at seven, that very darkness manured my nightmares. My lifeline, and the only power standing between me and destruction, was a paper-thin beam of light slicing in from the hall. The door was kept cracked for just this purpose, so that a sliver of day would fence my bed from the darkest night in the room.

As I was (and am) also an insomniac, bedtime was almost as stressful on my parents as it was on me. First came the operatic resistance, then the serial interruptions in television shows as they stalked back down the hall to threaten me with ill-defined but horrific consequences if I didn't "go to sleep right now".

As if sleep were a place to which I could simply walk, in my striped pyjamas.

One night my mother happened to glance through this narrow gap on the way to the bathroom, and saw me seated on the floor, reading Dr. Suess by that thin reed of light. The shout that followed sent the book flapping like a flustered chicken. I can only guess that she had parried one too many of my counter-recumbence tactics that night, and a vain hope of peace had been rudely extinguished.

Taking scarcely a terrestrial step I dove headlong into bed, vanishing deep beneath the covers before I'd even touched the mattress. Outside my mother continued raging, while I curled into a fetal posture and pinned my last wager on science.

For as any child knows, children's blankets are made of some advanced space-age stuff – possibly Kevlar – and are fully UL-rated against ghosts, prowlers, and middle-weight monsters. They may also be effective against parents, if, upon finding no head protruding from them, these last conclude they must not have had children after all, and withdraw.

But as no blanket is soundproof, I was able to determine that it hadn't worked this time.

At length my mother wound up with the observation that if I couldn't be trusted with an open door, she could damn well close it. Followed by a slam, and silence.

Here was trouble. I popped out, already terrified, and found the situation exact. The air was opaque as cast iron.

The door was closed.

It's hard to describe, or explain, the horror of that moment. It engulfed me like fire, and scorched away all trace of reason. I only knew that whatever hid in the dark each night, waiting for just this opportunity, was in that very instant converging on my bed. It was big and vicious, able to shred a child's blanket with a single swipe of its nondescript paw. And it was horrible.

I screamed in the dark, begged for the door to be opened, hot tears pumping down a face that had been dry. But there was no response.

For some reason it never occurred to me to get up and open the door myself. Being decapitated by a giant praying mantis was one thing; a spanking was quite another. But I was otherwise completely disabled by panic, chest heaving as I sobbed, quilt clutched to my sternum. A pounding heartbeat, maybe two, and whatever it was, would happen. And I'd be dead.

Not the dead you get playing army. Actual dead.

And then a strange thing happened. Something did surge out of the dark. It came from 'way down, 'way down to the first rung of a long, twisted ladder, a place so black and estranged to light as if it had never been.

But this thing came not from my room. It came from me.

Something angry, arrogant, powerful, climbed my spine. Undaunted. Unafraid. Something...

Scottish.

"Rrrrright, then!" it snarled, in my voice. "So et's eatin' me ye're aboot?" Well, GET ON WI' IT, ye blatherskate!"

Even in the dark I could feel my eyes burn red, my teeth gnash each syllable.

"Come 'n' get me, ye gory great monsters!" I, or It, continued. "But I'll STICK IN YER THROAT on the way doon!"

I'm not entirely certain I was speaking English. It might have been Gaelic. It might have been whatever we spoke before Gaelic. But the words came from deep, down where peaty black water laves the gates of creation, where things live that intellect denies.

And the thing would retreat not an inch. Not so much as the breadth of one unearned blade of grass.

"Och!" I cried. "STEP UP, ye pukin' milksops!"

No roar, no attack answered. Not a rustle. I sat bolt upright, quivering not from fear, now, but fury. My small fists clenched to hammers, and I was avid to ply them. To be sure, I was still aware of my tininess. I knew the big-scaries would probably just laugh and bite me in half. But this was no longer about winning. Or even survival. This was about giving as good as I got.

This was about honour.

I scanned the shadows again, fixedly, panting, but no longer crying.

I cocked my head toward the murky space beneath the bed. Nothing afoot there, either. Nothing breathed in that room, seen or unseen, except me.

Since that night it's been harder to frighten me with darkness, harder to threaten me with solitude. Lurid tales no longer run me. Hysterical exhortations to strike a shadowy enemy before it strikes me. Imperious demands that I not look under the bed, "for my own good". Because that night I learned a truth too true to be unlearned.

The monsters are wussies.

(From Growing Up Home, copyright RK Henderson.)

I Get Off With A Warning

So it's midnight, and I'm meditating on the lower deck when my fat lamp suddenly goes out. With only twenty minutes to go, I decide to sit tight. (No pun intended.)

Until something literally almost climbs into my lap. I yell, and it scatters. After collecting a flashlight, I see this.

It's the night shift. (Note my zafu and zabuton in the upper right.)

They scope me out, more from procedure than concern.

"Don't look like much."

"Don't smell like much, neither."

"No worries, guys. It's just a big Buddhist monkey."

And they continue their rounds, as if no one were there.

No one important, anyway.