New Year's Song: On va s'aimer encore

Here's another great example of a video that adds striking dimension to the song it accompanies. Not that it isn't fine as it is; Vincent Vallières is among the most respected songwriters in Canada. But the juxtaposition of these images deepens the lyrics exponentially, turning Vallières' love song into a reflection on the temporal ground of being, and borrowing a few Zen references along the way. (Check out the Buddhist wheel of life at 2:32.)

It's no exaggeration to say that non-francophones could skip the translation (see below) entirely and just watch the video. With the music playing, of course.

Right from the first scene, the LP theme is genius. Not only does this medium literally spool out, turning 'round and 'round like life – till you wind down in the run-out groove – it's also legacy tech. The very sight of a phonograph record casts the mind back.

The vignettes that roll past thereafter will be recogniseable to anyone on the planet, but they have extra pathos for expats from la Belle Province: a rich reel of Québécois faces, places, and contexts that brings tears to my eyes.

Varying frame rates – slower than normal; faster; parameter – underscore the orchestral rhythms of life. It goes too fast; it goes too slow; sometimes it just goes, while we amble on unseeing. And it's all synchronised – wheels within wheels, out of our control, and for the most part beyond our comprehension.

Consider also that everyone in this dense little epigram is ten years older at this writing. The toddlers are in middle school; the small children are teenagers. The young adults have started their own journey, many including new children in turn. And some of the older subjects are almost certainly gone.

I never tire of this slide show. Another metaphor from my increasingly historical generation. As is the tone-arm return at the end, sure to provoke an emotional response in any who grew up on vinyl.

While we're up, it's also pointed Buddhist commentary on the nature of existence.

So for a tenth time, on this New Year's of 2021, I wish all my readers a promising and productive 2022, and hope to see us all back here again 12 months hence.


ON VA S'AIMER ENCORE
par Vincent Vallières

Quand on verra dans l'miroir Nos faces ridées pleines d’histoires Quand on en aura moins devant Qu’on en a maintenant Quand on aura enfin du temps Et qu’on vivra tranquillement Quand la maison s'ra payée Qu’y restera plus rien qu’à s’aimer On va s’aimer encore Au travers des doutes Des travers de la route Et de plus en plus fort On va s’aimer encore Au travers des bons coups Au travers des déboires À la vie, à la mort On va s’aimer encore Quand nos enfants vont partir Qu’on les aura vu grandir Quand ce s'ra leur tour de choisir Leur tour de bâtir Quand nos têtes seront blanches Qu’on aura de l’expérience Quand plus personne n'va nous attendre Qu’y restera plus rien qu’à s’éprendre On va s’aimer encore Au travers des doutes Des travers de la route Et de plus en plus fort On va s'aimer encore Au travers des bons coups Au travers des déboires À la vie, à la mort On va s’aimer encore Quand les temps auront changé Qu’on s'ra complètement démodés Quand toutes les bombes auront sauté Que la paix s'ra là pour rester Quand sans boussole sans plan On partira au gré du vent Quand on lèvera les voiles Devenues d'la poussière d’étoiles On va s’aimer encore Après nos bons coups Après nos déboires Et de plus en plus fort On va s’aimer encore Au bout de nos doutes Au bout de la route Au-delà de la mort On va s'aimer encore Au bout du doute Au bout de la route Au-delà de la mort On va s'aimer

When we look into the mirror And read the stories in the wrinkles When there are fewer of them ahead Than the ones we've already got And when we live peaceably With the house paid off When the only thing left for it is to love each other We'll still love each other In the doubt And the crosswalks From more to more again We'll still love each other Through the triumphs And the reversals For life, till death We'll still love each other When our kids all move away When we've seen them grown When the choices become theirs And the possibilities When our hair turns white When experience is ours When no-one waits for us anymore When the only thing left to do is to fall in love again We'll still love each other In the doubt And the crosswalks More and more every day We'll still love each other Through the triumphs And the reversals For life, till death We'll still love each other When the times have changed When we're completely out of style When all the bombs have exploded When peace is here to stay When, without compass or chart We'll run before the wind When we raise sails Now made of stardust We'll still love each other After our triumphs After our reversals More and more every day We'll still love each other At the end of our doubts At the end of the road On the far side of death We'll still love each other Where the doubt ends When the road ends On the far side of death We'll love each other

WW: Christmas breakfast

(Swedish breakfast laid by me and enjoyed by my brother and I, Christmas morning 2021.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

North Coast Christmas Meditation

the mountain hermit's
fire is rising
winter rain

Issa

(Photo courtesy of Edal Anton Lefterov and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Tiny shop

(A year ago I shared the just-finished foundation of my new shop. This is what that space looks like now. Appropriately cramped and cluttered; right little piece of heaven. Best Christmas present I ever gave myself.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Good Movie: An American Christmas Carol

"Life is cause and effect. And you certainly are no stranger to the cause."

So says the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, aka the Quartermaster of Karma, in 1979's An American Christmas Carol.

As a Dickens scholar, this made-for-television movie – currently available "free with ads" from YouTube, as well as on DVD – puts me in an awkward position. It's from the 70s. It's American (more or less; we'll come to that). It's inspired by, though not entirely based on, a Dickens story that was already fine to begin with.

And it's also better than the source material in several important ways.

That's right, I said it.

From the top, let's put away one common fallacy: AACC is not a version, adaptation, or update of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's written as if the writers had never heard the Dickens story, were handed a one-paragraph synopsis of the plot, and told "Go!'. And everything about it works, from the concept, to the casting, to the wintry grey Canadian locations.

In it, Henry Winkler is one Benedict Slade, American boy, grown up through a harsh if unexplicated late 19th century childhood into wealth and bitterness. And now he's floating in the sea of suffering known as the Great Depression, and hogging the lifeboat all to himself. And damned sure he has every right.

The plot's rural New Hampshire setting is brilliant; a small town works much better for this than London, which may come off like a small town in Dickens, but it's not. A provincial miser is not only more conspicuous than an urban one, he's also in a stronger position to influence outcomes, for good or ill. And as a stage for rationalised selfishness in the face of full-spectrum need, the Dirty Thirties are a no-brainer.

Even more gratifying is the way the film's writers have amended certain shortcomings of the Dickens story. Slade quotes economic theory as if it were God's (or even science's) word. And after conversion he remains gruff, laconic, socially awkward, and highly competent, rather than becoming a loony old fool. Finally, the changes he makes are much more realistic and uplifting.

For our Mr. Slade doesn't wait for the new year, or even Boxing Day, to pitch in to the possible. He's out there in the piercing Christmas morning cold, rousting Thatcher, his much-abused clerk, out of his own heartbroken home and forcing him back to work.

Yet somehow Thatcher – whom Slade promises a tidy overtime – doesn't seem to mind, as he drives his employer, Grinch-fashion, from house to blighted house across a bleak landscape, returning and refinancing repossessions. One of which includes a family's freakin' woodstove!

In the midst of a New England winter!

In sum, Benedict Slade is simply much more interesting, and more believable, than Ebenezer Scrooge. (Sorry, Chuck!)

The cast, all but three of whom are Canadian with accents intact, is brilliant. The other two Yanks – David Wayne and Dorian Harwood – are particularly solid in their respective pivotal dual roles. In the Canadian box we have R.H. Thomson's sensitive turn as Thatcher (who apparently has no first name), Friday the 13th's Chris Wiggins as the man who saves young Benedict from an even grimmer future, and, in a rare early appearance… Luba Goy! Look for her in the bonfire scene at about the 1:14:30 mark. Fifteen seconds later she will shout "Eighty-five!"

And, gosh Henry Winkler is outstanding! Young actor, playing a character aging through multiple eras, giving as nuanced a performance as you'll see anywhere. I particularly like his take on Slade's soul. The complex old codger is neither stupid nor ultimately a coward; even in petulance you see a glimmer of irony in his eyes. He knows he's running a scam. On himself as much as the others.

For all this, AACC suffers surprisingly in some corners of the Reviloverse, usually at the hands of people who know little or nothing about Dickens or the original they claim to prefer. Some are offended that the lead appeared in a sitcom. Should any of them stumble in here, perhaps they might meditate on the difference between an actor and his character. As a Zenner might put it, "Whose name is in the credits?"

Not that there aren't some bona fide holes, of course. Of these the worst is the protagonist's age. As we learn, Slade was in his 30s during the Great War, so he couldn't be much more than 55 in the Depression. Yet Winkler's made up twenty years older than that.

And that's a shame, because a Slade just starting to anticipate the last act of his life would have been a richer premise.

There are smaller humbugs. The writers didn't grok inflation. The sum raised at a war bond drive is breathtakingly high in-world, to say nothing of the bids offered at a Depression auction. And for this country boy, the sight of workmen wrestling a hot iron stove – still smoking! – out the door in their leather gloves was not only surrealistic, it amounted to another missed opportunity. How much more dramatic to use 2X4s – the way that's really done – to carry a family's warm literal hearth away over Ontario's frozen December snowfields.

But none of that depreciates the work. I'm astonished to hear commentators sneer down this truly worthwhile experiment as "the dumbest Dickens adaptation ever".

First of all, it's not; I could write a book about the total crap passing for Dickens out there.

And second, it's not. As in not Dickens. It's a little different, and a little better.

So this holiday season, give An American Christmas Carol a stream. Unless you're as bitter as Benedict Slade, you'll be glad you did.

WW: Christmas rhododendrons

(There they go again, those ghostly white rhodies. This time it's another bush, about 100 yards from the house, suddenly covered with blossoms in mid-December. As with other recent Christmas surprises, one suspects a radically changing climate is behind it.)

The Nativity Koan

We in Christian-majority countries are whelmed this time of year in the Nativity. That is, the legend of Christ's birth, with attendant prophetic prognostics. Public emphasis is on the divinity of a baby conceived without sin – functionally, without sex. I could rant about that a bit, but right now another detail preoccupies me.

Namely, why wasn't Mother Mary killed?

Because that's what should have happened. As bluenoses still petulantly carp, past generations, in their presumed moral superiority, hated nothing so much as unkosher sex. And young Mary – about 15 at the time – had only just married the much older Joseph when she came up heavy.

We know from elsewhere in the Gospels that termination of the marriage contract was the least of potential results. Others included execution by having small rocks hurled at you until you died.

By decent good-standing members of the Church, of course.

Under duly-enacted law of a theocratic state.

In short, this act of "restitution" wasn't simply tolerated, it was ordained. In fact, holy.

But that's not what happened, and the solution to this mystery is found in the Shadow Gospel. Turns out, Joseph was a Jew.

Not a respectable Jew.

Not a Biblical Jew.

An actual Jew.

(Frankly, now I think of it, it's a wonder they didn't kill him as well.)

Says Matthew:

…Joseph [Mary's] husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.

It goes by fast; did you catch it? Joseph wasn't religious. He was righteous. And in this case, that meant turning his back on human authority and putting moralism – and indeed, the law – aside. Rather than stalking back to his new wife's hometown and thrusting Mary back into the arms of her parents with loud and public remonstrations, destroying her life and theirs – again, his legal and ethical duty – Joseph decides to protect her from the legal and the ethical.

Exactly what Joseph's long game was is a bit hazy, but at this point God dispatches an HR guy to handle the predicament:

But while [Joseph] thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

Again, Scripture is vague on exactly how God and his Angels prevented the rest of the Hebrew nation from killing them both, but since childhood, the Nativity paradox has fascinated me: it's facilitated by a deliberate rejection of received morality. As my religious education grew broader, so did my grasp of the import of Joseph's decision, and the risk he incurred.

So this Christmas – a time of opening hearts and auditing egos – I suggest we every one, Christian and less so, meditate on the koan of dogma and Dharma.

Because I suspect it's essential to the difference between what we are and what we're not.

(Photo of Joseph and Mary in private conference courtesy of Tomas Castelazo and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Grandchild gift

(Trivet made from an offcut of 3/4 inch plywood, upcycled for the grandparents.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Putting the Chan in Chanukah

A Buddhist bow to the lighted candles of my Jewish brothers and sisters worldwide.

Chanukah 2021 - 28 November to 6 December.
(5782 - 25 Kislev to 2 Tevet.)

(Photo courtesy of Ri Butov and Pixabay.com.)

WW: Christmas Steller's jay

(Cyanocitta stelleri)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Street Level Zen: The Great Matter

"We have nothing to live but life itself."

Roger Ebert


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Beach sky

Good Video: Bonhoeffer‘s Theory of Stupidity

This video is both brief and necessary.

We live in apocalyptic times. We're not the first; there have been many other apocalyptic moments in human history (the armistice decades of the World War, the run-up to the American Civil War, the Revolutionary period in France, probably a hundred more), but none of those were as apocalyptic as these, because those dysfunctions were purely behavioural. Today we're floundering in that same full-spectrum meltdown of morality and reason, at the precise moment we're also contending with the literal full-spectrum meltdown of our habitat. AKA, the thing we must have to live, without which we will die.

All of us.

I've commented before on a Zenner's responsibility in such times.

It's crucial to understand that the Stupidity Pandemic isn't just "their" problem. Our side – however we each define it – is just as fully implicated in the impending doom. I'm particularly discouraged by the social justice movement, one I've adhered to all my life, but which has recently collapsed into the same lynch-mob gutter as its presumed enemies. All the symptoms Bonhoeffer catalogued – inability to overcome conviction with logic, meeting substantive challenge with violence, thinking in slogans and catchphrases, reacting to vocabulary rather than statements or actions, and, I would add, simple crass bigotry shopped as virtue – are fully in evidence.

It's become impossible to advocate against racism or sexism anymore. Not truly. If you try, you'll first be smeared by your right wing opponents as a leftist lunatic, given the frankly crazy rhetoric of the most vocal elements of your side. Then, if you're old, white, and/or male, you'll be attacked by your theoretical allies for speaking at all.

And as Bonhoeffer pointed out, this weaponised hypocrisy can't be overcome with reason. Debate is worthless, to say nothing of common cause. The mob wants blood, any blood, and its formula for determining whose is forfeit is racist and sexist. (Note that ostensibly approved race or gender won't shield you, either. Anybody's killable. The Reivers just find another alibi on their infinite list – wealth, prominence, profession, perceived privilege, regional origin, academic record, alleged or immaterial past conduct, and on and on.)

I'm at a loss to understand how these bad-actors can possibly confront the Right with a straight face, now that they've joyfully incarnated all the very worst of it. The karma debt such behaviour incurs defies imagination.

As for me, I'm not going to shut up about it.

In this environment, if Zen is worth a damn, it's to keep us clear and independent of the generalised depravity. Let us all endeavour to look deeply, hold ourselves to a demanding standard of non-hypocrisy, and act in measure of acquired insight.

Because if our practice can't get us that, it can't get us anything.

WW: Orb-weaving spider

(Suspect Araneus sp.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Right Shame

"It is a horrible thing to feel unwanted — invisible, inadequate, ineligible for the things that any person might hope for.

"It is also entirely possible to process a difficult social position with generosity and grace."

Jia Tolentino

(Photo courtesy of Joelle Pearson and Wikimedia Commons)

WW: Sunset over another pond

(Open in a new tab for full effect.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Hermitcraft: Labrador Tea

Last week I was down to the tea bog I've frequented for 50 years, and while there, under dark wet skies, I snapped a few (not very good) photos of its eponymous resident.

Labrador tea (Ledum groenlandicum) is a piece of North Coast heritage tea drinkers should get to know. This knee- to waist-high evergreen, which resembles an azalea that sets sprays of showy white blossoms in summer, monopolises peat bogs across the north of the continent. Its leathery leaves are narrowly elliptical, dark green above and rolled at the edges. Yellow fur on the underside makes this plant a snap to identify, as does the powerful, lemony aroma it exudes when crushed. In fact, your nose is likely to be first to discover Ledum after you unwittingly step on some.

As both the common name and binomial suggest, European sorties to North America encountered L. groenlandicum early on, and while the Woodland nations were already infusing it for medicinal purposes, the newcomers apparently were first to drink it as a beverage. On the North Coast it's particularly associated with the fur trappers and voyageurs of the pre-settlement period, who carried the tea-drinking custom west.

Lab tea is definitely enjoyable for that, though for my money it's even better as an anchor for a mix. I especially appreciate the added tang and colour of rose hips. Grand fir (Abies grandis) needles or sorrel (Oxalis or Rumex ssp.) are also good, as are dried liquorice fern rhizome (Polypodium glycyrrhiza), catnip (Nepenta cataria), mint (Menthe ssp.) ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and orange or lemon peel. A blork of lemon juice is often welcome as well.

My own mix looks something like this:

2 cups Labrador tea leaves, chopped
1/2 cup dried chopped rose hips
1/4 cup dried mint leaves, pulverised
1/2 inch gingerroot, minced
a bit of dried orange or lemon peel
1 cinnamon stick, shredded
1 teaspoon ground cloves

For a single cup, infuse a teaspoon of this mix in boiling water, or a tablespoon for a pot; adjust quantities to taste. Serve steaming hot, with honey and lemon if desired. (I don't add honey to most teas, but appreciate it here.)

Though Lab tea may be gathered year-round, the bright new spring leaves produce the best tea. Look out for poisonous interlopers such as bog rosemary (Andromeda polifolia) and bog laurel (Kalmia polifolia), which grow in the same habitat and vaguely resemble it.

Pick the leaves into a cloth bag and hang indoors for a week or so, tossing from time to time to promote circulation. (Ledum leaves retain their colour, shape, and texture when dry, so may not appear especially "dry" even months later.)

In addition to a warming libation, infusions of Ledum are high in tannin and other antiseptics, and so handy for stanching and disinfecting wounds and sores, particularly of the mouth and throat.

But there's no doubt that a finely-tuned Labrador tea mix is simply a source of great well-being. Sitting by the fire on a blustery November day, sipping this pungent golden brew, it’s easy to see why it symbolised self-sufficiency and contentment to Old Settlers, as indeed it still does in many aboriginal communities.

“I laughed at the Great Depression!” the old Puget Sounders of my youth declared. “Lived like a king on Labrador tea and clams!”

WW: Autumn canopy

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

A Lament For Graveyards

I augur this the right moment to mention my regret at the passing of graveyards, which ironic development has left my society impoverished to a few woeful degrees.

Many of these are practical. For starters, a cemetery contains a wealth of historical data not easily acquired else. Just the demographics are a treasure. Where did past inhabitants come from? What religions did they practice? What organisations did they belong to, and what was their mission? What light does this shed on the present community? What have we lost? What gained?

In a cemetery you're surrounded by the final statements of multiple generations, reflecting successive changes in values and perspectives. Whenever I move house, one of my first outings is the nearest graveyard. An hour or so and I've got an earthier, more visceral understanding of where I am, more tactile, if not easily quantified, than the one I'll get from the local history books I'll study next.

Burial grounds encode a lot of culture, and if you're paying attention, the whole site, properly examined, amounts to a book in itself.

Then there's the simple peace of the place – the leafy green, the tranquil refuge from the fretting living. I've often botanised and foraged in cemeteries, as being mostly uncrushed by the pounding fist of development, and am especially fond of them as a mushrooming venue.

And of course, there's the sacredness of remains, an instinctive, non-religious kind of consecration we've never fully replicated. (Some cultures – First Nations, Catholic-majority societies, traditionally Buddhist peoples, Celtic homelands – find similar awe in sites that don't contain reliquaries, but industrial values have undermined even their ability to transmit such reverence to recent generations.)

Institutional Zen, in its Confucian attachment to human authority, practices a heretical adulation of the dead – disturbingly, even of pieces there-of – and while I'm reflexively uneasy with this, I do wholeheartedly embrace the sangha of the past as an indispensible source of companionship and insight. Their presence is felt strongly in cemeteries.

Still – speaking of irony – no-one on either side of my family has been interred for 70 years, making us yet another cause of death to the dead. The usual suspects are afield: the extreme expense of burial, for the most part, but also a callow, pseudo-logical insistence that we've no need of graves to honour and remember our loved ones.

Which is, of course, tripe. I would in fact greatly cherish a grave where I could visit my parents and grandparents, and the dear regretted friends now leaving this world at ever-greater rate despite my pleading insistence they reconsider.

No, the nondescript region where we will scatter my mother's ashes will not replace her grave: that specific plot of ground where what's left of her articulated body would drift toward new and different existences under a solid square of stone that I can see and touch.

Not even almost.

And as I myself will also receive no such treatment, I must eventually commit the same sin of cenotaphery, and drive yet another nail into the coffin of, well, coffins.

Not that I'd impose a traditional burial on my survivors, of course. I get it; things have changed. And although I accept that as a Zenner, I do much regret my headstone. Because I've got the most awesome epitaph ever:

"Nothing is carved in stone."

How happy I'd lie below such a koan.

Good hunting to all of us on this, the annual Druid crusade to keep the dead dead.

(Photo of Tomnahurich, my favourite graveyard to date, courtesy of Derek Brown and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Bikecombed skeleton

(One thing I love about biking, rarely celebrated by those who sing its praises, is the stuff you find by the side of the road while doing it. An astonishing variety of wealth flies off the traffic speeding by, including, at last count, about half the tools now in my shop.

In this respect, bicycling helps to fill the gap left by the loss of ready access to a beach.

Another case in point: this portable apocalyptic horseman, discovered par terre last week while pumping up a long hill.

Which serves me well, because though I always candle Smiling Jack each year, I've never had any other decorations. So now there's a skeleton hanging on my door. Rather like a Christmas wreath, except, uh… bonier.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Hermitcraft: Elderberry Tea

Here's a seasonal blessing worth knowing. The recipe is as simple as they come: you pour boiling water over elderberries, which set in profusion from late summer to mid-autumn, mash them a bit with a spoon, and let the whole steep for ten minutes. (Note that I'm talking about blue and black varieties here; raw red elderberries are toxic to about half the population, and in any case, are a late-spring harvest.)

Elderberries (Sambucus ssp.) have the fruity flavour one would expect, but also an astringent edge that makes them better suited to tea than juice. I tend to avoid adding honey to the finished product, but do like to include a pinch a-piece (not more) of ground cloves and cinnamon in the steep, and freshen it up with a drop of lemon juice (again, not more) before drinking.

The result, drunk hot, is the perfect companion for cool days of crisp sun or driving rain, having the exact taste of the first and the antidote to the second. Because they grow in dense clusters, elderberries are quickly gathered and once separated from their stems they freeze very well, simply twisted up in a plastic bag. That way you can continue to enjoy this tea all winter long.

And that's a good thing, because among other notable benefits, elderberries have proven anti-viral properties, having particularly distinguished themselves in scientific trials against the flu. They're also high in Vitamin C, another winter concern, though how much of this survives infusion is a good question.

Finally, varieties with a healthy yeast bloom, such as the one in the photo above, make a good sourdough starter, suitable especially for sweet applications such as coffee cake or pancakes.

So sock a sack of Sambucus into your freezer for the cold months. It brings a bit of August sun to your New Year's Day. (Or a bit of February sun to the Queen's Birthday, for my New Zealand readers.)

WW: Sitka mountain ash

(Sorbus sitchensis. AKA rowan.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

The Origin of Happiness

I'm suddenly reminded of the endless dithering in the model kit section at Sears, before choosing the next addition to the epic WWII dogfight hanging from my bedroom ceiling.

The dithering was exquisite.


(Photo of Avro Lancaster model [had it!] courtesy of Matias Luge and Pixabay.com.)

WW: Swingin' on the hook

(I've never seen so many boats anchored off Fairhaven [Washington], where the marinas are all at capacity. Most of the newcomers appear to be transoceanic; a few look like homeless people. Both, I'm fairly certain, are down to COVID; the ocean-crossing crowd are beached by closed harbours overseas, and have nowhere else to go.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Interdependence Kyôsaku

"The flower and the wind are old friends."

Bill Porter (Red Pine)


(Photo courtesy of Nico Westerhof and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Autumn nightfall over the bay

Appearing also on My Corner of the World; open in a new tab for full effect.

British Proverb

"When the Devil is old, he goes to a monastery."


(Photo of the Monastery of the Temptation, built on the backcountry site where Christ is said to have been interrogated by Satan, courtesy of Tamar Hayardeni and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Sunset over the pond

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Good Video: The Way I Tend To Be

I've loved this song for years but only recently searched out the video, which adds incisive context to the lyrics.

It's a detailed elaboration on the Irish saying, "The first thing to do when you're in a hole is stop digging."

The scenario of this short film is exactly how I used to feel after a break-up, like something of Great Import had happened and I had to lug this massive torch around against everybody's advice, while the world placed bets to see how long I could keep this shit up.

(Fifty-two years, as it happened. That's how long. So maybe there's a winner out there.)

Therefore, for the benefit of others like me – not such slow learners, I hope – here's a brief meditation on the smallness of your suffering and the worth of your life and time.

Don't wait for CNN to show up before you figure that out.

The lyrics themselves bring some Zen of their own to the party. I especially like, "‘Cause it turns out hell will not be found \ Within the fires below \ But in making do and muddling through \ When you've nowhere else to go.

Finally, listen for the drums; they're especially well done.

The Way I Tend To Be
by Frank Turner

Some mornings I pray for evening
For the day to be done
And some summer days I hide away
And wait for rain to come
‘Cause it turns out hell will not be found
Within the fires below
But in making do and muddling through
When you've nowhere else to go

But then I remember you
And the way you shine like truth in all you do
And if you remembered me
You could save me from the way I tend to be
The way I tend to be

Some days I wake up dazed, my dear
And don't know where I am
I've been running now so long I'm scared
I've forgotten how to stand
And I stand alone in airport bars
And gather thoughts to think
That if all I had was one long road
It could drive a man to drink

But then I remember you
And the way you shine like truth in all you do
And if you remembered me
You could save me from the way I tend to be
The way I tend to be

‘Cause I've said, "I love you," so many times
That the words kind of died in my mouth
And I meant it each time with each beautiful woman
But somehow it never works out
But you stood apart in my calloused heart
And you taught me and here's what I learned
That love is about all the changes you make
And not just three small words

And then I catch myself
Catching your scent on someone else
In a crowded space
And it takes me somewhere I cannot quite place

But then I remember you
And the way you shine like truth in all you do
And if you remembered me
You could save me from the way I tend to be
The way I tend to be

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.)

Starfish Correction

Will the real Pisaster brevispinus please stand up?

Looking again at the photo I published at the top of last week's post, purporting to be of an adult giant pink starfish (Pisaster brevispinus), I've come to the conclusion that it's actually just an unusually large leather star (Dermasterias imbricata). Among other things, it doesn't seem to have any brevispini (short spines).

Sigh.

Oh, well. I hold out hope that this favourite of mine, which was always more numerous in deep water than intertidally, is still down there, outbreeding the plague.

(Photo courtesy of D. Gordon E. Robertson and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Oystercatchers

(Haematopus bachmani.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Good News on the Starfish Front

Not Pisaster brevispinus, unfortunately.

(Update, 15 September 2021: my report of a mature Pisaster brevispinus in this survey was sadly premature. See correction.)

So after a down year due to COVID lockdown, I got in not one but three Annual Puget Sound Asteroid surveys this year. And the news is brilliant!

The first took place at a bay on the Canada-US Border, where two old friends and I have searched for hardy echinoderms since the arrival of the climate disruption-related sea star wasting disease (SSWD) about ten years ago. There we'd previously noted a small but tenacious community of Pisaster ochraceus, the once-ubiquitous ochre star that had seemingly disappeared from all points south, both pelagic and thalassic.

But now they've gone bananas. As we probed crevices and rocky groins in the lower tidal zone, we found seam after seam stuffed with adult P. ochraceus, in numbers reminiscent of the pre-plague days.

Nor was that all. A subsequent hike along Bellingham Bay, a few miles south, fetched up many more, lying around in jaded profusion as if they owned the place.

With unrestrained delight we documented this turn of events in a wealth of celebratory photos.

Pisaster ochraceus.

And this is not, I soon learned, an isolated case. Another visit to the other beach I've been monitoring, near the southern extreme of the Sound 150 miles distant, produced not only several healthy adult Evasterias troscheli, where before I'd only found juveniles, but also an able-bodied adult P. ochraceus, luxuriating the warm plague-friendly austral shallows. And best of all, the first appearance of a robust Pisaster brevispinus!

That last was truly exciting, owing to the long relationship I've had with the North Pacific giant pink sea star. When I was three years old, my uncle and a neighbour girl – young adults both, and divers – disappeared below the inlet in front of my grandmother's house and resurfaced with a great glistening pale monstrosity. They propped it up, tall as I was, on the beach in front of me, and I watched its rows of tube feet wave in phlegmatic bewilderment at the sudden change of world.

This lasted all of five minutes, after which they returned the perplexed fellow to the saltchuck, but the moment remains sharp in memory, now six decades gone.

A few years later I rowed the same bay, hip pressed against the port gunwale, head craned over the rail to peruse the creatures on the bottom. The further out I rowed, the fewer I could discern, until at last only great green bands of sea lettuce were visible in the depths, alternating with bare grey sand.

And then nothing.

Except… here and there, the ghostly undulating skeletal hands of yard-wide P. brevispinus, glowing up through 100 feet of green water.

So the disappearance of my old friend truly hurt, and I fairly cried when I found this one.

Evasterias troschelii.

As it happens, I'm not the only observer of this uptick. As early as 2018, a grad student at UC Merced noted genetic variances in local P. ochraceus populations that allowed a durable nucleus to survive after the great majority had perished. At the time her department wondered aloud whether a similar evolutionary reserve might bail out other species as well.

And so it seems. The single blue note here is the continued absence of great sunflower of death Pycnopodia helianthoides, the final Puget Sound regular still absent. (Though I didn't survey for Leptasterias hexactis, the tiny six-rayed star that lives under rocks, so can't comment on its status.) Marine biologists have suggested that Pycnopodia – soft, squishy, easily penetrated and dissolved by SSWD – may be extinct in our waters.

But I hold out hope that a breeding population, sheltered in colder, deeper fathoms, will one day repopulate its ancestors' old range.

SSWD-resistant Dermasterias imbricata, still very present in the South Sound, as it's been since the beginning.

WW: Onset of autumn

(Acer rubrum)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Christmas in August

(Deck the halls with black monastic laundry. Same shrub you saw last December.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

The Sword of Righteousness

A few days ago I saw a humorous meme involving Ouija boards on a Facebook group for members of the church I grew up in. The fact that I still have respect for Christianity is entirely down to the religious training I received there, which was deep and reflective, and continues to be an asset to my Zen practice.

But we had a couple of "those" Christians, too.

So it was that the thread underneath contained a few protests and dire warnings about EVIL! and SATAN! and THE OCCULT!!! (They caution writers not to use caps lock and multiple punctuation, but it's dishonest not to when expressing the opinions of those who think in them.)

And this got me mulling the difference between real and fake religion.

In a real religion, you're the idiot in the room. Fake religion confers special knowledge, even superpowers, such as the ability to speak in tongues or handle snakes or see auras. Or even to sit in one position for hours, disregard pain, cure bodily ailments, and look into the souls of others.

In contrast, after practicing real religion you know less than you did before. Stuff you've always hated, you're not so sure about. Uncorroborated beliefs, you're less willing to shoulder. Facile explanations, shallow documentation, scriptural lawyerball, saints and saviours, you eschew. Answers at all become suspect.

You become dumb. The world is big, and you're not. You've spent your life flailing in a dark room, your sword helicoptering overhead like everyone else's, and now you just sit down and wait for reliable intel.

That's what happened to me. After a week of zazen, I knew nothing. Because I'd never known anything. My conversion experience left me small, as small as everyone else. And now I can't unsee our identical smallness.

Blessed with a church that prizes spiritual penetration, and a family that meets rubbish with corrosive sarcasm, I never believed any nonsense about parlour games and witches and backward rock music. But these days I'm considering the larger issue.

A true faith practice isn't about becoming an expert in special dimensions or states of consciousness or planes of existence that the uninitiated can't see or understand. We have teachings about that sort of thing in Buddhism, too, and my take on them is a convicted "whatever". Because I won't be distracted by trivia.

And that's the difference.

In fake religion, you strive to fill your mind with as much crap as possible. Those with the most crap, are the most accomplished.

In real religion, you strive to empty your mind of crap.

And the true disciples are those still shoveling.

(Photo of the Sword of Righteousness courtesy of Anthony Appleyard and Wikipedia Commons.)

WW: George Bush headstone

(This is the resting place of the first US settler in Thurston County, Washington, one George Bush. No, not that George Bush. This one died [at home, of natural causes] during the American Civil War.

He was also African-American.

But he's most remembered for his legendary generosity, lending food, equipment, draught animals, and seed to subsequent arrivals – often not insisting on repayment. He's a man much commented in the historical record, having literally laid the foundations of his community, and of whom I've yet to encounter a single criticism.

He was also the subject of a concerted [though fortunately unsuccessful] effort to deprive him of his vote and property, based solely on his race.

Beside him lies his wife Isabella, here in Thurston County's first public cemetery – which was established on a parcel of the Bush homestead that they donated for the purpose.)

Grave Advice

One day Nasrudin was walking down a country road when he saw a group of horsemen riding toward him at great speed. Fearing bandits, he quickly jumped over a nearby wall and found himself in a graveyard.

"Where to hide?" he cried. Looking desperately about, he spied an open grave.

Meanwhile, having seen his troubled behaviour, the riders dismounted and followed Nasrudin into the cemetery. At length they found him trembling with fear at the bottom of the hole.

"Ho, fellow traveller!" they called down. "We were riding this way and saw you flee something. Do you need any help? Why are you in this grave?"

"Well," said Nasrudin, "as to that, simple questions often have complex answers.

"About all I can tell you is, I am here because you are, and you are here because I am."


(Photo of Adolph Schreyer painting courtesy of Sotheby's and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Black-headed grosbeak, male

(Pheucticus melanocephalus.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Samsara Koan

"If you think it's hard faking your own death, try faking your own birth."

Steven Wright

(Photo courtesy of André Peltier and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Hairy woodpecker

(Dryobates villosus.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Koan Practice

My practice tends to veer back and forth between sitting and teachings, and acting and responding. Sometimes mostly one, sometimes the other.

External phenomena are the deciding factor; classic zazen requires specific conditions that I can't consistently guarantee, given my economic status. But I console myself that the effectiveness of zazen alone famously fails to survive triangulation.

Sure, you're Dogen himself when you're shut up in that little room, with no immediate fears and no pressing needs. But what happens when you don't rule the universe? How does your Zen fare in the real one?

You know, the one outside your skull.

The one beyond your teacher's control.

The one that doesn't give a damn about your twee little Zen practice.

This test, cœnobitic Zen often fails.

I still prefer classic meditation practice, and if I had the choice would do nothing else. (So... I'm lucky I don't...?)

All of which came to mind when this article by Carol Kuruvilla – in the Huffington Post, of all things – washed up on the beach. I haven't recently been permitted to steep in koanic literature, not with the steady, stable discipline I prefer. And this article reminded me of that.

The five chosen koans, drawn from the ancestral record, remain as provocative as ever. And the commentary – an important component of eremitical koan practice – is excellent. (Note that one respondent is even a civilian. Welcome innovation.)

So I'm sharing it here.

Newcomers will find the most effective approach is to take just one koan, without commentary, and sit with it for at least a day. (Meaning you carry it around in your head, even when you're not literally sitting, returning to the written koan a few times to refresh the impression. Avoid that scriptural thing where you obsess over the words and try to pry meaning out of them. That's not this.)

You can keep this up for as long as you like. Monastery monks, studying under teachers who claim the right to "certify" their insight, have been known to contemplate one koan for 20 years.

But whatever your case (no pun intended), the next step is to read the commentary and compare it to your own notions. The formal commentary in the ancient literature is itself usually so brief and cryptic as to amount to another koan, implying another sustained cerebral simmer. Modern takes are generally just explications, either "this is what the old master meant" or "this is what it means to me". But both styles are worthwhile, and useful for practice.

When you feel you've chewed that bone enough, move on to the next.

And remember: every time you read a koan is the first. You could probably base a lifetime practice on just these five, rotating back to the first when you've done with the last.

Any road, I offer this hot lead to the Nation of Seekers, with fraternal regard.

Gasshō.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)