WW: Forest fire sunset

(The fire is a few miles west of this ridge; prevailing winds brought the smoke this way, creating this bloody [and I mean that literally] sunset.)

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: County fair triumph

(This sweet potato sprouted in a cupboard last Christmas. Instead of throwing it out, I stood it up in a flower pot. Spool forward seven months, and not only does it take the blue ribbon in its class at the county fair, but also the Growers' Choice award.)
#Zen

Hermits Arrive

So I'm doodling around on the Enlightenment Superpath, and I surf into Arvesund, a Swedish company that makes prefab outbuildings. I browse through attractive garden sheds, summer cabins, sauna houses, and the odd lusthus, when suddenly I discover their Eremitens koja: a purpose-designed, so-designated hermit hut, from the drawing table of architect Mats Theselius!

My price inquiry to the company has gone unanswered, but another firm sells a kit to these lines, made entirely of recycled wood, for 96 500 Swedish kronor (about $11,300 Yank, at current rates). Models with new-wood exteriors sell for 79 500 SEK ($9,300 US); new wood overall for 67 500 SEK ($7,900US).

This is not the kind of money a hermit carries around; I could build at least eight such cabins for the cost of that lowest-price model. (Four, with woodstoves.) But I gotta hand it to the designer: he gets it. If it's true that some of the serving suggestions in Arvesund's literature are a bit, shall we say, spiritually encumbered, the dimensions and basic accommodations are entirely on-spec. This is indeed "just enough". Good on ya, Mats!

But the mere existence of this product raises a burning question: are we hermits becoming that thing that all populations must be to have legitimacy in the Red Dust World: a market? Will those glossy up-market magazines that pass for the Buddhist press soon be carrying adverts for elegant artisanal Japanese rice kettles and fair-trade rushlights made by Indonesian villagers?

Estimated Category of Risk: NBL.

(Photographs courtesy of Arvesund; front view located on Materialicious.com; interior and side view courtesy of Poppytalk.com; specs courtesy of SW Byggritningar AB.)

WW: Boys in the surf

Poem: As You Like It (The Hermit)

Through the magic of Twitter, I recently met Prabhu Iyer, a poet in Chennai (India). Among his many compelling works is a Hermit cycle that succinctly encapsulates the eremitical impulse and mindset. He has graciously given me permission to post a movement I particularly like here, and so I'm sharing it with you.

The envoi alone could serve as the motto on the Great Seal of the Nation of Seekers, if we had such regalia.


AS YOU LIKE IT (THE HERMIT)
by Prabhu Iyer

Let the film end before intermission
characters be underdeveloped
let the plot lie open like cut veins

and let the background score
resonate in the hall at its shrill note

It's a broken piece of the heart
cracked into two:
two faces reside here now
on either sides of the chasm.

Make whatever you wish out of it
Sweet or bitter end,
tragedy, comedy or farce
or thriller or horror,
write your own story, make it up.

take any road up the hill
to eternity beyond.


(Скит [Hermit Dwelling], by Аполлинарий Михайлович Васнецов [Apollinary Vasnetsov], courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Tadpoles again

(It's happened again: tadpoles growing on the beach. This time it's a brackish puddle by the headlands. I don't know if frogs breeding in this dangerous, inhospitable zone is new, or I just never noticed it before.)