New Buddhist Superhero

OK, hear me out:

Equani-Mouse.

(Interested parties can buy the wall decal from this Etsy store; illustration from linked page.) 

WW: Sitting shadow

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Good Podcast: We Regret To Inform You

Since many readers of this blog are engaged in creative endeavours, on this day of American Thanksgiving, I'd like to share a Canadian thing for which I'm grateful.

I've listened to Terry O'Reilly, a Canadian adman who's made several excellent CBC Radio One series on the art and history of marketing, for just short of 20 years. When his current project debuted simultaneously as a podcast, it proved so successful that he and his family (in a classic Canadian turn, Terry's production team contains more O'Reillys than the Dublin phone book) launched their own podcast production company to produce other worthy projects as well.

One of which Terry flacked (admen are born, not made) on his own podcast. So I gave it a spin.

It was great.

It was fresh.

It was life-changing.

We Regret To Inform You: The Rejection Podcast is required listening for anyone involved in a creative venture. In each episode, Sidney O'Reilly (daughter) unspools the tale of an iconic creator – writer, painter, filmmaker, athlete, actor, musician, anyone shopping his or her heart – and reveals how conventional wisdom treated them before they were famous.

Like Jesus Christ Superstar's 40 years in the desert, searching for a producer, any producer, to take on this massive cultural epiphany of the 70s.

Or the Temple of Doom that the guys who finally gave us Bat Out of Hell – Meatloaf's epic genre-busting rock-opera of an album – had to negotiate, and renegotiate, and abandon, and reconfront, and assault again, to get one of pop music's most thunderous masterworks into listeners' hands.

Or the 15-year odyssey, complete with Cyclops and sea monsters, that the gods sent Mad Men on before they'd (grudgingly) allow it to become a landmark of modern television.

All beloved household names, all gold standards in their domains now. Every last one sneered down, dismissed as sophomoric, laughable, unsaleable, boring, tragically lame.

Over and over and over.

Till the day they redefined art.

As a writer, Regret populates my solitude and refuels my soul. The main movement of each episode, in which Sidney recounts in full numbing splendour all the obstacles these people had to overcome to reach the summit, is skeletal support for those of us in the foothills. When we've relived this ordeal, and are basking vicariously in the subject's earned glory, Terry steps in to deliver a pithy, potent epilogue, summing up what we've learned, and ending on the show's simple – but in that moment, roaring – catch phrase:

"Never – ever – give up."

I've teared up more than once.

Finally, as the theme music rises, we get an envoi: a synthesised voice lists the winding litany of triumphs, awards, firsts, and fortunes amassed by this pathetic geek whom no-one is ever going to take seriously.

The whole experience leaves me restored, replenished, and ready to horse up again. If you too are an artist – or just a fan – I suspect it'll do the same for you.

You can hear We Regret To Inform You: The Rejection Podcast on its own website, or download it to your favourite device from iTunes/Apple Podcast or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

Best of luck to everyone who's building today, in this dictatorship of yesterday.

(Photo of Australian painter Tom Roberts' Rejected, in which the artist contemplates a rejected work, courtesy of the ABC and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: November lake

(Click on the photo to see it bigger.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Alan Watts On Hermits

There’s always a very inconsiderable minority of these non-joiners. [...] But you will find that insecure societies are the most intolerant of those who are non-joiners. They are so unsure of the validity of their game rules that they say everyone must play. Now that’s a double-bind. You can’t say to a person you must play because what you’re saying is – you are required to do something which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily.

Alan Watts

Long ago I happened upon this teaching from Alan Watts – an Anglican priest, founding figure of Western Zen, and arguable Zen hermit – for whom I have attested admiration. He was specifically addressing the predicament of Buddhist hermits, but as was his habit, more basically referring to the universal status of free-range monks of all paths. Virtually all religions have them, though some meet us with greater grace than others. (I've been told that Zoroastrians, alone among major religions, have no hermits, but I might not believe it. It's possible they "have no hermits" in the same sense as Western Zen.)

Over the years I've returned to Watts' meditation on hermits and the Institution, and found it validating and insightful. Since fellow hermits and the hermit-curious rest here occasionally, I thought to spread the wealth.


(Photo courtesy of Ben Blennerhassett and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Major monk meal

(Fried eggs from real chickens, barbecued cheese curds, and salsa over steamed vegetables and brown rice. Why envy the immortal gods?)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Second Thought

Everything happens for a reason, but the reason doesn't happen until everything happens.

(Earlier meditation here.)


Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com and a generous photographer.

WW: LBMs

(I don't know what species this is, as I tend to ignore LBMs [little brown mushrooms], because they're hard to identify and not edible. But whatever they are, they were blanketing the ground under some pines.

Very nearly a lawn of mushrooms.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Guarding the Walls

Palladius said, "One day when I was suffering from boredom I went to Abba Macarius and said, 'What shall I do? My thoughts afflict me, saying, "You are not making any progress, go away from here".' He said to me, 'Tell them, "For Christ's sake, I am guarding the walls"'."

The Paradise of the Desert Fathers


(Pictured: the Bodhi Tree, the huge old bigleaf [Acer grandiflora] I guarded will sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain.)

WW: Epic Saturday dinner

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.