For better or worse, the age of the internet has resulted in a homogenization of our lives. It has blurred boundaries in ways never before possible. Counter-culture is now the performative norm. Punk is dead; long live punk.
It is tempting to put a sandal on one’s head in the way of Jōshū and then just leave the courtyard. Better yet would be if we could put the courtyard on our head and leave the walking to the sandal while we talk a bit about mū with a dog.
If the normal position is resistance to authority to the point of mediocrity, there is little left to rebel against.
Perhaps Zen is when you realize that all words are superfluous and find yourself listening to jays cussing at crows, watching cats watch chipmunks, feeling the unseasonable cool air chill bare calves as it drifts through from patio door to window, the taste of coffee on your tongue, that chipmunk chirping back at the cats.
It is that moment that something clicks and you realize this is just it.
Get up, eat breakfast. Tomorrow we will add work to the mixture. Chop wood, carry water — as the old wisdom goes.
Today there is no writing that is wanting to be written for poetry, nor the tale I am telling mostly to myself. There is no music to be chased. Text one daughter or her twin, ask if the parent doing her sleepover at a friend’s house would mind terribly if I showed up closer to 11 instead of 10.30 because my last daughter will want a ride to job she hates and refuses to replace so she only has to pay for Uber one way. I’m still trying to figure out how her transportation woes are my own.
Still… Chop wood, carry water. Just doing. because doing is all that we can know. We pretend we know what has happened and what will come, but we know neither very well. When you really examine it, now is all we know and it is gone before we can even ponder it.
I miss those days before 24/7 television. I think that’s when I actually still liked some of what was out there. There was no need for “reality television” that is anything but reality. Life was reality enough and we still fully embraced the escapism of turning on the television. If you needed more reality, you could grab it between five and six-thirty most evenings. And, again, for a half-hour at ten (here in the Upper Midwest anyway).
The afternoon circus talk shows aside, it was all escapism. And that was fine.
Twenty-six weeks starting in the autumn. Repeats the next half year where we could relive our escapism. And you had to wait each week for your show to come around again. Binge-watching was unheard of.
My daughters sometimes make me watch shows, promising me that I’ll really like this one or that one. And sometimes they are okay recommendations. Good even.
But then comes the inevitable binge watching requirement. All three pull that one on me: “Dad, let’s watch television for three hours each night for the following four days!” And then, the groaning about how they’ll have to wait a whole year for the next eight episodes of varying length will be available while I pray they forget to include me because I am utterly burned out on the storyline that has a weak premise to it anyway and is generally anything but escapism.
But the part I miss most is the late-night station sign off. That crappy quality video of the American flag flapping in the perfect breeze to the Star Spangled Banner or America the Beautiful at midnight or one a.m. It could mesmerize when you were over-caffeinated, over-sugared and generally not intending to wake up until after ten in the morning. I would watch the perfect flag perfectly flapping in the perfect breeze between the wear artifacts in the magnetic video tape.
And then… Suddenly… White noise visually and sonically. Big Bang residue, they said at least at one time, although who knows if that is really the case.
at slipping out of no-thought while at doing no-thing remembering the beforewhen where sitting was just for the sitting and considering a return to not doing anything but sitting once again
I re-opened a blog site from ancient history (2007-2008) and made it public again because one of my new readers requested access to what had been marked a private blog (or maybe not, but it is back “live” regardless).
It is just a catalog of quotes and poetry that caught my fancy, namely of a Taoism or Zen Buddhism bent. There’s nothing terribly exciting there unless you are into those kinds of things, or if you want a peek into where my mind was about a year before I ended up choosing sobriety as a more enlightened path than wonton drunkenness.
Check it out, if you are so inclined: Useless Tree
I originally made the site private primarily to stop a reader from demanding new posts when I had decided I was no longer in the mood to be enlightened. And then I never got back to posting on it or making the site public again when that mood passed away.
