WW: No-one suspects... the 1970s!

(Until it's too late. #thingsbuddhistmonksdontneed)

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.)

Tuesday, 20 March, is Bodhisattva Day

It's happening, droogies! This Tuesday the time comes again to emulate Mr. Rogers and throw down for Bodhisattva Day.

So:

ALL TROOPS BREAK OUT YOUR CARDIGANS!

That's pretty much it. No need to wear a colour-coded ribbon or do an interpretative dance or march about in the streets chanting "Hey-hey ho-ho!" or sing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walk out.

Just wear the wool of compassion.

Or the acrylic. Your call.

Because enlightenment is its own movement.

Again, that's THIS TUESDAY, 20 MARCH. All over the world. Boys and girls. Buddhists and non-Buddhists. People who are legitimately cold and those who are just posing. Crunchy and smooth. Waterfall and window shade.

Tuesday.

20 March.

Cardigan.

Gassho.


(Photograph of Día de los Muertes ofrenda to Mr. Rogers at Carmichael Library courtesy of Albert Herring and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Stained glass

Addiction

If you'd told me when I was 22 that the day would come when I would cherish my ex-girlfriends, I would have called you mad.

As a young man, I did relationships like a drug. Heroin, to be specific. I loved hard, like diamonds, and lost harder. I wore rejection like a crown of thorns, bled from it like stigmata, dragged it across the earth like the Holy Cross. Cowardice, caprice, indifference, were feminine vagaries I could not forgive.

I was the ex-boyfriend from hell.

I don't know what changed. I didn't hear from my ex-girlfriends for years, and then I did. And I was ecstatic, like a pilgrim who falls to his knees on the far edge of the desert, weeping for the pain, and laughing for the weeping.

No-one was more surprised than I.

So perhaps, sometimes, even I grow up.

Perhaps even heal.

My ex-girlfriends are interesting, caring, engaging women, and a gift to my life. They have great husbands, brilliant children, and there is nothing I wouldn't do for any of them.

There's no word for this unexpected love. It's not possessive, like a lover's, or exclusive, like a brother's, or conditional, like a friend's.

It just is.

And whatever it is, it brings me endless joy.


(Adapted from Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Around Washington's Borderlands, copyright RK Henderson. Photo courtesy of Peter Dowley and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Morse code key

(After ten years fighting off my ham radio addiction, I recently dug out my old station and set it up again.

This is my classic brass straight key, the one I first used to get on the air.

Been in storage for a decade. I've missed it.)