Sunday, February 15, 2009

It was near four o'clock on a September day, so that the atmosphere was well-brewed to a visible haze. There was a deep stillness, broken only by a light rattle, a light chink, a small sweeping sound, and an occasional montone in French, such as might be expected to issue from an ingeniously contructed automaton. Round two long tables were gathered two serrried crowds of human beings, all save one having their faces and attention bent on the tables. The one exception was a melancholy little boy, with his knees and calves simply in their natural clothing of epidermis, but for the rest of his person in a fancy dress. He alone ...

Saturday, February 14, 2009

From false astrologies and somewhat dismal rites,
changed into the undying and always laid aside,
I have kept a tendency, a solitary savour.

From conversations wasted like powdered lumber,
with the hummility of chairs, with words wrapped up
in slaving for a secondary will,
having that feel of milk, of wasted weeks,
of air locked above cities-

Who is able to boast a more enduring patience?
Prudence envelops me in a tight skin
of colour concentrated like a snake's:
my creatures are born of a wide recoil:
oh with one drink I can say goodbye to this day,
this day I picked from the sameness of earthly days.

Brim-full with substance of a common colour, silent,
I live like an old mother, patience impaled,
a church of shadows, the res-in-peace of bones.
I go, full of these waters profoundly bedded,
laid down in mournful, concentraled sleep.

In my guitar-like innards an old tune plays,
dry, rosonant, fixated, motionless,
a loyal diet, a puff of smoke:
a steady element, a living oil:
a sentinel bird looks after my head,
an invariable angel inhabits my sword.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Eugene karate

I started going down to Eugene to train with Pete and Marie, who I've known for 26 years, since I started in Shotokan. The vibe is good and Pete teaches a good class, with good concepts, and the feeling is that I'll probably start doing that on Fridays. It's only fifty minutes down there. We are training in a gym on 27th and willamette, whose name I forget. Eight bucks for a day pass, and the floor is a good wood floor. It just feels very relaxed and reminds me of the good old days in karate, when we had some fun and sweated a lot, and nobody broke any bones.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

letters on the page

If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter
and the static my senses make-
if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake-

then in one thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives,
in gladness.-
rilke, book of hours

Sunday, February 01, 2009

thoughtful thoughtations

"I wish to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me."-Thoreau

Is there, for honest poverty,
that hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
we dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
our tils obscure, an' a' that;
the rank is but the guinea's stamp;
the man's a gowd for a' that
-Robert Burns