itty bitty community!

i can't help it

a friend (who won't start a new chess match with me, by the way), emailed this amongst many other true stories, er, jokes.....

what do you call four bullfighters in quicksand?




quatro sinko.

oh, hello

out of the loop....no, no, no. in a different loop?...well, no, not really. all loops create the same sphere? hmmm, well, we're getting there i think. :) mostly, i haven't done a whole lot of computing lately. to those who have checked out some older stuff and wondered about me, thank you for your good thoughts. my prayers for you are often.

so, the big deal lately is that jen and i are putting together a flower farm. so many beautiful ways it's falling into place. i'll try to get some organization to my excitement and post more on that later. perhaps a progression page or something will develop.

yeah, right - like my computer time's gonna go up any time soon. ;)

until then, zen. hope you enjoy the shots.

complex cycle of continuation. this is you!

whatever this makes you think should be the caption. so,...?

the mystery and beauty of the Creator - we inhabit a living planet

sunset on the pacific. must....experience....again

missing san fancisco, for the most part at any rate

jen in cafe sapore, san francisco. absolutely beautiful, from woman to cafe on the hill

NOW is what's happening; enjoy NOW

with subtle tones making an easy rhythm,
footsteps become droning missile attacks
on ant hills and dying leaves
newly fallen from sycamores and elms,
and the little bushes i didn't plant but still take the time
to prune and mold to how i imagine
they really should have looked.

what i thought were leaves suddenly
flutter from the treetops,
swooping and chirping,
discussing "where is South -
and do we want to go there?"

my thoughts follow their lead,
upward and out
away from me
for an eternal moment,
one that should not leave me.
sharp breath in, and already exhaling
in a warm wet cloud
gusting from within -
i know these moments are fast waning.

winter is howling over my head,
lying in the stacked clouds,
waking from a very short nap.
She is angry and ready to snap,
waiting to begin her prowl -

but it is not yet her time.

with this new conclusion
and impervious longing,
stretching each moment out
to capture the essence of now,
i put away these petty worries for another day,
bend my sights back down to decaying Earth,
and sigh to myself, "carpe diem, carpe diem."

kbs 4.1.2004

duality of consciousness

‘tis but a dream that has me now awakened,
stirring from slumber as sun scares the moon into transparency;
briefly, i saw myself for who i was, who i am no more.
i move myself from these filthy crumpled sheets
and eat the sandy breeze upon filling my eyes with ocean wide;
step onto the rock and peer to the sky –
let the gulls’ cries and the salty wind
erase my sense of solitude and put me as one
with the insects crawling between my toes.

double columbine [or the layered story of humanity]

knowledge true

if there be a way to see what is hidden,
may it be found in the woods;
hiding in the leaves of trees,
being washed in the cool babbling brook,
living with small, furry friends in a hollow log.
wherever, and however i may come across it,
only let it be revealed, and i will not care how it comes to me.
there is a beauty to the lonely walk,
over leaves softened by lingering dew,
by wild groves of flowering weeds, reminding me of my place,
of the true me;
in these simple sweet living poems i see what i am,
what i am lacking,
how i need to be to attain it.

kbs 4.1.2004

how to touch my soul (journal entry #174)

only a nice touch

[not necessarily gentle,
as we understand gentle to be,
yet with a gentle heart
behind the movement]

will awaken my soul.



only when i understand
how pure truth is

[purity knows not
a hard or soft rebuke;
instead it knows
the lesson to be learned]

will i be able to
revel in the true mystery
and come away gleaming.

monk's mutterance

so the people who
"talk to themselves"
aren't so bad after all
says my feeble mind
to my all-too-eager tongue -
after all, i just
finished talking to myself -
after all, who's to say?
perhaps i'm not
talking to myself
but to a
universal audience -
it's out there,
it's been thought,
that is to say
it's been created,
so now it's
part of the whole
without which
wholeness does not exist -
who's to say, after all?

BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE NOW BE HERE.

"If you overesteem great men, people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions, people begin to steal.
The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion in those who think that they know.
Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place."

- Tao Te Ching [3]

warm weather is happening somewhere constantly - right now, OUR TURN. :)

a sense of how to be

this morning, a tree caught my attention and offered up its view on how i should choose to live.

this beautiful tree, teeming with new, tender leaves on strong branches, is surrounded by the bricks of a building, the concrete of the sidewalk and asphalt of the parking area. yet, without a word of renunciation, still it bursts forth its beauty every spring.

i stood and wondered about this tree; in some ways i was saddened by its seeming demise of being trapped in such a web of human "civilization"; but it simply stared back at me, waving to me in the light breeze. it is alive, and even in the midst of its placement, it does not hold a grudge toward those who planted it there. it simply IS. it simply GROWS. it simply PROVIDES. it simply GIVES its beauty to all who see it, as well as all who don't even look. it is SHELTER for the creatures of the earth - other plants vining up its trunk, squirrels and birds nesting comfortably in its strong arms, insects and such having a hayday enjoying, sharing, and interacting to keep the amazing cycle going.

i wish to be like that tree; when i am in a place where i feel i am surrounded by opposition, i will be beautiful. i will GROW, PROVIDE, GIVE, and SHELTER without question. when others do things that destroy, i will continue to create.

stare at a tree for a while today - one buried in the depths of our concrete conditions. consider the purity of its way, and ponder how your life may be the same as that tree. that tree and i will both decay back into the earth someday; but now, while that tree and i are here together, i will remain aware of our similar duties to be peace inside the chaos.

yellow flower at yellow wood state forest

instant coffee, instant tea....instant peace?

there are so many instant satisfactions to desires in the world. instant drinks, instant meals, instant loans, instant sex (just dial and they show up if you have the cash), music-on-demand, the list is endless.

what about instant peace? i desire that more than anything. i don't need an electric cheese slicer; hell, i don't even want one. what i do want is be close to God. in an instant, i need to feel unconditional love flow through my soul, dripping down over my brain like alka-seltzer's bubbles or pepto bismol for the mind, and then out to my fingertips so i can uncurl my fist, into my lungs so i can take in a deep calming breath and let it out, and oozing out around my tongue so that by the time i speak, only words of peace and love can be uttered.

so, another "for instance", which seem to be prevalent in most of my later blogs: living in this country, i'm surrounded by (and even express on my own at times) great acts of selfishness. when money, personal gain, ladder-climbing, greed, and revenge are the cornerstones of one's life, those "qualities" are evident in one's life. when i am confronted by some form or another of this type of action, like someone letting a door slam in my face, or watching someone ridicule another person, or witnessing someone cutting me off on the highway, i pretty much get pissed first. not my desire. more importantly, though, is that almost immediately, i'm overcome with a sense of needing to love that person.

"forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." to me, that's more than appropriate for about three thousand two hundred sixty four moments a day in my life. it isn't that this person who's done some act of non-love always digs it and always does it on purpose; in most cases, i would imagine they don't even realize there's a better way to live. so, my purpose in this life is to show unconditional love and spread peace as much as i can; otherwise, i'm not being the soil that the seeds of God's love need to live.

frustrations of patience

for years, i've noticed this quarky thing i do of getting all freaked out literally moments before a situation is resolved. a couple of for instances: i'm working on the farm, trying to free up a blade on the mower that stopped spinning. i'm twisting and turning, yanking, getting all the leverage i can muster to try to break it free - no budge. i know what i want to be doing; i want to be mowing; instead, i'm under the mower, not getting anywhere. just as i begin to think too much of about where i want to be, instead of where i am, i can feel the impatience growing, smiling at its impending victory over my emotions. maybe even to the point of showing my frustration through some angry action, or even beginning to swear a bit, all of a sudden - POP! and it's broken free and i'm back to mowing.

another example: perhaps a bit more relevant to most - listening to someone telling me a story, right when i just had to be getting on my way across town....all of a sudden i'm mired in this conversation that seems to have no end. i get so impatient looking for the end, trying to guess the outcome so i can simply say it and get the talker to the crux, i even lose focus and stop paying attention at times. all of this because of my selfishness - since when do i want to be at a store where everything i'm looking to see or buy is sitting on shelves collecting dust, while this human being with thoughts, emotions, and a desire to share them with me seems less important than that, only because of my lack of appreciation for its value. what a bummer.

what i've noticed out of examples like these and countless other similar experiences, is that i am a tad impatient at times. i don't dig it, i don't try to be, i know i don't like it when someone else is that impatient; all i want to do then is tell them they need to relax, enjoy life, get out of their all-too-encumbering shell and into someone else's.

medicine for the healer.

the kicker of all this is that just as i begin to lose my patience, the problem is solved. if only, i tell myself, if only i had been patient for a few more moments, if only i had listened a few seconds longer, i would be more at peace, the situation would be resolved as it was going to be anyway, and if anyone else was involved, they would feel as if i actually cared and am truly a patient, kind person.

what i dig most out of this is that i realize what i'm doing - perhaps not all the time, but it's a very noticeable thing to me because of my history of doing it. i really think i'm getting better at it, too; i can smile when i do it, knowing that i've caught myself being "a tad less than perfect" again. also realizing i've noticed myself becoming impatient before and halted the negative process has given me peace, seeing that i can improve that about myself.

i suppose if i'm talking to you sometime and i don't seem to be paying much attention, you might mention some code saying, like "how's the mower running?" that should do the trick.

i'm almost there - i can feel it. when i get to the point of knowing myself a bit better like this, i know i'm home free in that respect. good gravy, that's an awesome feeling.

the downward spiral

proof that the human brain has some rotten pathways: there is a new law in the chicago area that, simply put, states that a person traveling the speed limit in the left lane can be pulled over and ticketed for impeding the progress of people who are speeding.

i know there is a light at the end of the tunnel, because i believe there's a divine purpose behind all this surreal madness; what i don't get yet is why humanity as a whole is not trying to get together to make it brighter. i absolutely love those who are, and i'm learning, ever so gingerly, to love those who aren't. then again, maybe they are, too; perhaps these stunts they're pulling are part of that mysterious plan.

all i can say is God grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change, the courage to change the things i can (and should), and the wisdom to know the difference.

no death, all life

last monday i was at my friend/mentor/pastor's home; in the back yard, there was a limb down out of a tree due to the recent ice storm that graced the area with crystalline beauty. on the limb was snow sprinkled here and there, like powder on a young girl's face as she first tries to put on makeup - you know, random. at any rate, my thoughts wandered to what i think of life and death while staring at this limb; limp, wet and heavy with water, dug a bit into the soft ground beneath it.

out of nothing come thoughts to me - i always call it God, mostly because when i quietly ask a question or wonder about something rhetorically, inwardly, there's this subtle way an answer comes to me. when i consider the answer, it's amazing how right it is for me at that moment. to me, that speaks of something greater than myself that gives me insight, if only i listen for it.

this time, the only thing i heard was "there is no death." right on. so i started pondering it, and it was groovy. this limb, in all its glory in the tree, was like a human being; full of life and power, helping to renew and motivate existence through its actions (such as turning carbon dioxide back into oxygen), and just as beautiful as any other thing in creation.

now, according to our limited framework of understanding, we say it's dead, lying on the ground, in the way, not attached directly to its life-giving force, leaves all gone from its branches - what good could it possibly do now?

thus is life, i say. this branch is not dead. it's gone from its source to continue its life with purpose. now it will lay below the tree, decaying slowly into the earth from which it sprung, and over time will harbor all sorts of insects and animals while beginning to revitalize the soil beneath the tree from which it fell so that its source can continue to thrive and do ITS purpose. and the cycle continues.

thus is life. humans come and go, but when our efforts are aimed at producing goodness and using our abilities to do what we can to help improve the earth at our fingertips and others' lives we hold in our hands, then we become that tree. it knows its purpose and it doesn't waver. when the struggles and happiness of life are meant to guide us and push us evermore into that mystery of [what's next?], and we go there willingly, knowing that once we are done here, our next purpose will be made evident, then we understand that there is no death. memories of my grandmother, conscious and unconcious thoughts that drive me to be good, are proof that she is not dead, only gone missing from my vision for a bit.

be the tree, and when you begin your sudden descent into the mystery of the soil, you will be at peace, knowing that you are heading towards more life.