Ancient Trees Give Way to New Development

I took this photo because I found that it could tell the whole story.
It is infinitely depressing to witness the forests disappearing here but I am finding some hope in the way that life springs up in every possible niche of the new human-built world.

Wholesome Food in Hanoi

Hanoi is a killer.

The street food is delicious and the people are good but it is hard to take the speed, the noise, the MSG, and the smog of a Hanoi life for very long.

I travel by bicycle or motorbike, from a good job with a local NGO to meditation or yoga class but still feel strung out and depressed after a week or two in this city. I find that all my senses are filled with heavy-metal dust. - I need a lot of support and Lac Long Quan is one place where I go to get it.

On the west shore of West Lake there is a small bulk producer of macrobiotics. - They have saved my life in this smoggy fast-paced action-packed city.

Macrobiotic is about a person's whole environment, from food to social interactions to the climate and geography. It views sickness as the natural attempt of the body to return to a more harmonious balance with the dark and light aspects of life - it is really about diet and lifestyle.

Here is a poem by Matsuo Basho, translated by Robert Hass

A monk sips morning tea,
it's quiet,
the chrysanthemum's flowering.

Humic Musings

Work has begun to overwhelm time for musing and writing. - Sympathetic Disengaged Curiosity is now intended simply as a fist in the air - a positive mark of solidarity - part of the deepening online litter of composting words and ideas - not really a catalyst so much as a space for light musings and general appreciation for poets and visionaries: fingers pointing at the moon.

On transitions here's Mary Oliver's poem 'The Journey': 

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Gratitude List

Practicing gratitude is a good way to stop allowing the wonderful aspects of life slip by without awareness. The Dalia Lama has spent his life offering his encouragement for us to practice it, the Buddha taught it to his disciples over 2,000 years ago and now science is finding more and more evidence to support the notion that gratitude is a great source of well being and happiness.

Over the past few years a group of friends and I have been working on making lists of things that we are grateful for. For enumeration, and that possibility that it may inspire others to start their own lists, I offer a few gems:

Maine 2013: The way leaves dance in a light breeze; orange evening beams of sunlight moving through the room, peanut butter and butter on fresh baked bread, aimlessness, new seedlings in the garden, beansprouts and cherry tomatoes, pet names from my mother.

Arizona 2013: Waking up without an alarm, rainy afternoons, sparkly shoes, watching the sunset, unexpected letters, breathing in & loving out, pint-sipping, misty midnight walks, giving compliments, that feeling you get when you can't imagine anything better, the way fall air smells, snuggling under the covers, mischievous smirks, snort-y laughing, being in the moment.

New Mexico 2012: Alpaca gatherings, alpaca eyelashes, buffalo roving, yellow aspen groves, yellow tea cup, bicycles, sweet rainbow children, the fuzzy grey of the changing season.

Seattle 2012: Stars, lightning bugs, robots, history, gifts, love, giggle, farts, dancing, sleep.

Nevada 2011: Baked sweet potatoes, truck campers, the Sierras, smooth tapioca pudding, peanut brittle, homemade apple butter, jars of change, winds of change, seasons that change, sweat pants.

New Jersey 2011: Gathering and eating food from our garden, grieving in order to move through, time alone, eggs and bacon, discovering new music, cartwheeling everywhere!

Scotland 2010: Making big plans and changing them at the last second, cutting off all my hair, the sun rising after I've lost track of time, remembering the magic of hot tea.

Arizona 2010: Rawberry strubarb pie, homemade earl gray rock candy experiments, Arizona evenings, suited up for tennis, rocking chairs and turkey vultures, never-ending fire roasted pablanos, gathering the bundle of your mind into this present moment.

California 2010: Deep breaths to bring me back to the present, sweet rose wine and rocking chairs, grounding ideas born long ago, calligraphic ink stained fingers, the rat's nest treasure, yoni art, reunions with east coast birds, homemade felt for yurt homes, dark mustaches forever in my heart.

Wisconsin 2009: Listening to my kids pretend stuff.

Vermont 2009: Falling asleep with my new born nephew in my arms, opening my heart to give and receive love, visits from close friends that live far away, sitting by a warm wood stove, midnight strolls under a clear sky, snuggling in my warm bed on a cold morning.

Georgia 2008: Translucent Bunny ears, silk dog fur, coarse dog fur, wild heavy rain, hail, very late night quiet.

New York 2008: Yoga interrupted by puppies, yoga interrupted by the smell of coffee, the smell of coffee, enjoying coffee while writing about yoga being interrupted, laughing at myself and this list, anticipating having fun in the theatre later, anticipating more laughing at myself.

What to do?

I just watched the Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society, Wade Davis's, TED talks again. They are very impressive but left me wondering if the current approach to collecting and preserving indigenous knowledge is really useful for these communities or just ego based materialism and misguided do-goody-ness.

There is no doubt that there is an unfortunate chasm between the indigenous communities interests and the interests of the research community. - It leaves an aspiring do-goody human ecologist with strong consideration of 'turning on, tuning in, and dropping out'.

San Francisco Zen Center's Reb Anderson asks if these doubt questions are 'apropos of peace' he suggests that they are not but that 'being' with these questions and 'standing beside' them is apropos of peace.

I relaxed into Reb's lessons and then relaxed even more when I found this poem by Mary Oliver called When I Am Among the Trees:

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

Our Island Earth

Anyone who has spent a significant portion of time looking at maps will probably agree that the Mercator projection is a poor representation of the globe. The Mercator projection is disorienting at best, it stretches Northern countries to look massive and places the north pole, Europe and North America as a kind of gigantic roof over the world.

Buckminster Fuller also found this to be a let down. He believed that this projection worked to further the disparity between the global north and global south and so he created a new kind of projection. He called his projection a dymaxion map, projecting the earths surface onto a grid of triangles and then laying them out flat (an unfolded icosahedron).


Looking at this realistic map of the earth brings great relief. One gets the feeling that we are in Pangea still. It shows all the continents stretched across with the north pole in the center, creating a kind of "Reunite Laurasia" or "Reunite Gandwanaland" map but in real time.

Here is a poem by Mary Oliver, not about about this amazing little blue planet of ours but about that giant orb of fire that makes all this blue and green possible.

THE SUN

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed—

or have you too
turned from this world—

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

The Tongue Says Lonelines

Just heard this poem from Jane Hirshfield and was moved to put it up here.



The Tongue Says Lonelines

The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief,
but does not feel them.

As Monday cannot feel Tuesday,
nor Thursday
reach back to Wednesday
as a mother reaches out for her found child.

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.

Not a bell,
but the sound of the bell in the bell-shape,
lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron.

~ Jane Hirshfield
from Come, Thief

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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes