Rain and Poetry

Sitting now in a serious rain storm in the mountains of Luang Prabang, The thunder and lightning seems to be carving new mountains and the rain is turning the streets to rivers.

I'm sitting here reading poems and thinking about the amazing chance we have here in all this mess of life, all the happiness and sadness, to see and to hear.

Here is a poem I am spending some time with from Philip Whalen, another vagabond American moving through Asia.

Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis

I praise those ancient Chinamen

Who left me a few words,

Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry 
drunkenly scrawled on the margin 
of a quick                        
splashed picture- bug, leaf,                        
caricature of Teacher            
on paper held together now by little more than ink            
& their own strength brushed momentarily over it
Their world & several others sinceGone to hell in a handbasket, 
they knew it- 
Cheered as it whizzed by- 
& conked out among the busted spring rain 
cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all.

October

News from the Common Ground Country Fair and the rich harvest from a good summer brings me spinning back to New England this morning. - It is October there and everything has changed, the chimneys blow smoke into the salt air and the leaves blow past. It is also October here but the place seems hardly to have noticed. - There is no morning chill, no smell of pumpkin pie, no cold hands digging the potatoes from the damp and frosted morning soil. Yet somehow we can all still feel the October-ness on our sunburned skin. - In the swell of the passion fruit and the bounty of the rice harvest. 

Here is Robert Frost's poem October:


O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

To-morrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow,

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know;

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes' sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost--

For the grapes' sake along the wall.

Crossing the Mekong and Leonard Cohen's 'Anthem'

by Cory Whitney

When we look up the river we can see patches in the mountains, now new upland rice fields or seedlings for rubber or teak. The river bubbles and rages below our little cracked long boat. - The engine sputters and chokes.

We look downstream at the tall forests and the healthy green mountains and we hope that the engine will keep running - and we hope that the forests will remain - and we hope that the people will find a way to be full and healthy here.

Photo of Leonard
Rolling Stone 

Meanwhile, as researchers we try to grasp all the complexities of the situation and try to wrap our minds around the dynamics of it.

How can we know what is happening or why? - We are taking out boddhisatva vows to try and find some solutions in an endless sea of delusion and confusion. We attempt draw out some possible answers from the chaos of information and complex human and nature interactions. - Never saying we are certain and attempting to prove that we are wrong before saying anything.






This song came to mind as I was sorting through all the data:


The birds they sang

at the break of day

Start again

I heard them say

Don't dwell on what

has passed away

or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars they will

be fought again

The holy dove

She will be caught again

bought and sold

and bought again

the dove is never free.



Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.



We asked for signs

the signs were sent:

the birth betrayed

the marriage spent

Yeah the widowhood

of every government --

signs for all to see.



I can't run no more

with that lawless crowd

while the killers in high places

say their prayers out loud.

But they've summoned, they've summoned up

a thundercloud

and they're going to hear from me.



Ring the bells that still can ring ...



You can add up the parts

but you won't have the sum

You can strike up the march,

there is no drum

Every heart, every heart

to love will come

but like a refugee.



Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.



Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

That's how the light gets in.

That's how the light gets in.

Buddhism meets Animism

Bo Ton Mai ceremony for Ficus tree

The elders of a small village here were having troubles with illegal logging and over-harvesting in the communal forests - they took direct action to save the trees.

They organized a Bo Ton Mai ceremony and ordained all the trees as monks. The local pagoda and the most famous monks from the region came along with all the villagers and nearby people. The offenders who had been cutting trees and damaging the forests even took part in the ceremony and acknowledged the sacredness of the forest and the trees.

The problems with forest mis-use did not continue.

Read Susan Darlington's story about Buddhist Ecology in Thailand: http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/susan.htm

Rain and Janis Joplin's Deepest Heart

Janis Joplin
Morrison Hotel Gallery

It is the rainy season here and I am sitting in the rain in the nostalgic early morning. - Thinking about a quiet saturday afternoon in the late summer. My father and I had just gone for a long walk in the forest and were rained out and made it back to his wood paneled ford station wagon. It smelled of woodworking and cigarettes.

He put on this tape by Janis Joplin and we listened to her speech a few times through while we sat in the dryness of the car with the rain drawing a curtain between us and the rest of the world. Just my Dad and me and Janis Joplin, she was totally hopped-up on some kind of crazy drugs and energy and sharing her heart.

Here is the poem that she shared on stage in the middle of a song. It might be titled 'You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow'.



I don't understand how come you're gone

I don't understand why half the world is still crying

when the other half of the world is still crying too, man
and it can't get it together.

I mean,
if you got a cat for one day
I mean, if you, say, say...
maybe you want a cat for 365 days, right?
You ain't got him for 365 days
you got him for one day, man.
Well I tell you that one day, better be your life.
Because, you know
you can say, oh man
you can cry about the other 364
but you're gonna lose that one day,
and that's all you've got.
You gotta call that love, man.


That's what it is, man.


If you got it today you don't want it tomorrow, man,
'cause you don't need it,
'cause as a matter of fact, as we discovered on the train, tomorrow never happens, man.
It's all the same fucking day, man.
  

-----
Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

The Peace Of Wild Things

Mary Oliver
Cleveland Arts Prize

Sitting now in the breezy cool quiet after a storm in Luang Prabang. - All my colleagues are busily working on making maps and carefully preparing to present our research ideas tomorrow.

- Presenting the research idea to them all day was enough work for me so I am reading poems and eating bananas.

I'll sneak out for a beer now and look at the Mekong and the forests.

The Peace Of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.



— Wendell Berry

"I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world"

I'm now on the rooftop of the Mekong Region in Luang Prabang Province about to head off into the wilderness to work for Hmong and Khmu ethnic minority groups. I am lucky enough to be traveling with three incredibly hard-working and dedicated environmentalists and permaculturalists who are acting as translators and sounding boards for ideas about how to test the hypothesis - that utilization leads to conservation: all within the new model of Bio-Human Ecology (unpublished) by my boss and the Founder of the Social Policy and Ecology Research Institute (SPERI): Ms. Tranh Thi Lanh.

Life is exceedingly good and full of adventure mixed with hard work and laughter.

Here is a poem by Walt Whitman I am revisiting this morning:

Photo of Walt Whitman
Smithsonian Magazine

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."