January 2012
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November 2011
1 post
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Nothing Exists
Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.
Desiring to show his attainment, he said: “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received.”
Dokuon, who was...
May 2011
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March 2011
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July 2010
2 posts
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Ginsberg
No blame. Anyone who wrote Howl and Kaddish earned the right to make any possible mistake for the rest of his life. I just wish I hadn’t made this mistake with him. It was during the Vietnam war and he was giving a great protest reading in Washington Square Park and nobody wanted to leave. So Ginsberg got the idea, “I’m going to shout “the war is over” as loud as I...
June 2010
1 post
WatchI love that Google Voice transcribes my voice messages, even if its accuracy leaves much to be desired…
March 2010
2 posts
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A Cup of Tea
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full...
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February 2010
3 posts
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Letter from the editor
You said Emmet loved pigs, gave thanks for pigs at Thanksgiving Day dinner, longed to have a pig. The zoning laws made that impossible in St. Louis. So his parents arranged to have him own a pig which lived in Tennessee. He has pictures of his pig. He receives letters from the farmer about his pig. He puts aside part of his allowance to provide mash for the pig. And he is saving money and making...
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Human Beauty
If you write a poem about love … the love is a bird, the poem is an origami bird. If you write a poem about death … the death is a terrible fire, the poem is an offering of paper cutout flames you feed to the fire. We can see, in these, the space between our gestures and the power they address —an insufficiency. And yet a kind of beauty, a distinctly human beauty. When a winter storm...
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Prologue
I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.
And I lost about a year of my life and much of the comfort and security I had not valued until it was gone. When the police released Kevin, he came to the hospital and stayed with me so that I would know I hadn’t lost him too.
But before he could come to me, I had to convince the police that he did not belong in jail. That too time. The...
December 2009
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November 2009
3 posts
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October 2009
2 posts
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By Heidi, Our Labor of Love
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September 2009
18 posts
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By Mind Alone Larry Niven, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, June, 1966.
part 7
So we edged the car out from among the other cars and took off down the twisting concrete road that leads a mile down to the base of the mountains. We all had our cars, because none of us but Pat would have known where to teleport to. It was a silent drive until we got the cigarettes. They seemed...
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alexdrum:
“Circle Square” - 2008
Here’s...
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Peaches
A mouthful of language to swallow: stretches of beach, sweet clinches, breaches in walls, bleached branches; britches hauled over haunches; hunches leeches, wrenched teachers. What English can do: ransack the warmth that chuckles beneath fuzzed surfaces, smooth velvet richness, splashy juices. I beseech you, peach, clench me into the sweetness of your reaches.
— Peter Davison.
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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (excerpt)
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back...
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By Mind Alone Larry Niven, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, June, 1966.
part 6
We got the story out of him. Pat’s parents had been watching television when they’d heard a scream from the next room. They’d rushed in to find Pat on the floor, already unconscious, with a blazing fever. The doctor was there now. “I’m going after her,” said Lou...
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The Lonely Street
School is over. It is too hot to walk at ease. At ease in light frocks they walk the streets to while the time away. They have grown tall. They hold pink flames in their right hands. In white from head to foot, with sidelong, idle looks— in yellow, floating stuff, black sash and stockings— touching their avid mouths with pink sugar on a stick— like a carnation each holds in her...
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123
At the night prayer, when the sun declines to sinking, this
way of the senses is closed and the way to the Unseen is opened.
The angel of sleep then drives forward the spirits, even as the
shepherd who watches over his flock.
To the placeless, towards the spiritual meadows, what cities
and what gardens he there displays to them!
The spirit beholds a thousand marvellous...
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By Mind Alone Larry Niven, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, June, 1966.
part 5
I got my drink replenished and reached for a cigarette to occupy my other hand. I was out, and Pat wasn’t back yet. Nuts. I joined Larsen again. Shouldering my way into the group that surrounded him.
His eyes lit. “Art, have you thought of an experiment for us?”
I hadn’t,...
August 2009
22 posts
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August 26, 2009. 8:31 pm. Packing, from the...
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August 25, 2009. 8:26 am. Commuting to work....
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August 24, 2009. 9:20 pm. Sewing. Columbia...
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August 23, 2009. 6:20 pm. A walk around the...
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By Mind Alone Larry Niven, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, June, 1966.
part 4
I said, “Doctor Larsen, could that be dangerous?” He shook his head. “She’s right. From the campus to San Diego was much further.” “But we did that under supervised conditions.” “How do you supervise teleportation?” Larsen smiled like a child...
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Desire Song
The graspy heart, that lobster of ours that wants, and wants, and is evolved to lust for one grain shat by a swallow in flight as much as the whole packed four-story silo. There’s a cloud across the moon tonight like the skin boiled milk gets cooling—slightly blue and slightly wrinkled. I want the glass of warm milk from my childhood carried up to the crib by a living Grandma Nettie...
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Letter from the Earth
THE Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished by extinction, almost, by...
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Poetry
The only way to be quiet is to be quick, so I scare you clumsily, or surprise you with a stab. A praying mantis knows time more intimately than I and is more casual. Crickets use time for accompaniment to innocent fidgeting. A zebra races counterclockwise. All this I desire. To deepen you by my quickness and delight as if you were logical and proven, but still be quiet as if I were used to you; as...
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Total Breakdown
By Mind Alone Larry Niven, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, June, 1966.
part 3
He looked like the melancholy farmer with the pitchfork in American Gothic would look if you gave him a loud sports coat and a yellow tie and poured three martinis into him. “It means the total breakdown of physics,” he roared, jabbing a grinning sophomore in the chest with a...
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Understanding Architecture from the Inside
Omnivoracious: The wider culture tends to tell stories about architecture that are organized around the Great Creators: the Gehrys, the Wrights, the Pianos (the Howard Roarks). Your stories, by contrast, are much more impersonal—if there are any heroes they are as much the people who explore their environment—the Michael Cooks. Where do people fit into your designs?
Geoff Manaugh:...