Happy Equinox everyone!
I hear spring is in full bloom in the South – azaleas are up, daffodils have come and gone, the dogwoods are just beginning to hint at opening, but here it is still chilly in the daytime and damn near cold at night. There is snow still on the mountain tops and the winds bring a serious nip with them. Being a lover of winter, snow, cold and mountains (and getting a serious spring tease in
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The Grasses by Rumi
The same wind that uproots trees
makes the grass shine.
The lordly wind loves the weakness
and the lowness of grasses.
Never brag of being strong.
The axe doesn’t worry how thick the braches are.
It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves.
It leaves the leaves alone.
A flame doesn’t consider the size of the woodpile.
A butcher doesn’t run from a flock of sheep.
What is form in the presence of reality?
Very feeble. Reality keeps the sky turned over
like a cup above us, revolving. Who turns
the sky wheel? The universal intelligence.
And the motion of the body comes
from the spirit like a waterwheel
that’s held in a stream.
The inhaling-exhaling is from spirit,
now angry, now peaceful.
Wind destroys and wind protects.
There is no reality but God,
says the completely surrendered sheikh,
who is an ocean for all beings.
The levels of creation are straws in that ocean.
The movement of the straws comes from an agitation
in the water. When the ocean wants the straws calm,
it sends them close to shore. When it wants them
back in the deep surge, it does with them
as the wind does with the grasses.
This never ends.
-
Spring Azures by Mary Oliver
In spring the blue azures bow down
at the edges of shallow puddles
to drink the black rain water.
Then they rise and float away into the fields.
Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy,
and all the tricks my body knows –
the opposable thumbs, the kneecaps,
and the mind clicking and clicking –
don’t seem enough to carry me though this world
and I think: how I would like
to have wings –
blue ones –
ribbons of flame.
How I would like to open them, and rise
from the black rain water.
And then I think of Blake, in the dirt and sweat of
staring through the window, when God came
fluttering up.
Of course, he screamed,
seeing the bobbin of God’s blue body
leaning on the sill,
and the thousand-faceted eyes.
Well, who knows.
Who knows what hung, fluttering, at the window
between him and the darkness.
Anyway, Blake the hosier’s son stood up
and turned away from the sooty sill and the dark city –
turned away forever
from the factories, the personal strivings,
to a live of the imagination.
-
Damn! That’s good stuff….
Sadly, however, the last few days I’ve been pretty sick with some sort of flu bug and it’s really knocked me out – low energy, body aches, stuffy head, sneezing, coughing, blah, blah, blah….and now, as I’m on the mend and beginning to feel better, my poor nurse of a wife has been laid out. As we all know, being sick sucks. But being sick in a foreign country, in a foreign house, with no moms to make you chicken soup and no comfortable bed to curl up in and watch entire seasons of the Sorpanos in a day, it all makes being sick even worse! Don’t get me wrong. Leigh has taken extraordinary care of me, as I am trying to with her now, but that yucky feeling is just accentuated when there is none of you comfort things around you.
And like the super nice guy I am, I left my sick wife in bed today alone so I could go climb a mountain in honor of the Equinox. Of course, she gave me a kitchen pass, took the ol’ ball and chain off, and let me go…but not before sneezing on me.
It was day one of feeling better and I knew I was going to be pushing my body, but at the same time my body needed it. For days I’d been laid up in the dark cave of a room we have and so even if my body wasn’t ready for it, my mind was eager to do something physically demanding. Nothing like a good, 2000 feet virtually straight up climb to really loosen the phlegm let me tell you! The object of my conquest was a small mountain right on the other side of the river from
I should say at this point that this is the highest I have ever lived in my short life. Let’s see,
Did you know that at 15,000 feet there is 50% less oxygen than at sea level? So at 10,000 feet there was only 2/3 the amount of oxygen I am normally used to. So even after just the bike ride and walk, all along flat ground as
Unfortunately, I could not really stay very long on the summit and enjoy the panoramas as the wind was ferocious. There were a couple gusts that almost knocked me over! And my poor ears and cheeks couldn’t really take the abuse being blown on them. So after a few photos and thanks and praises to the Mother, I began the equally difficult but dramatically shorter decent back to the river and city below.
There is really nothing like fresh pressed coffee in the morning! We now have our kitchen set up and our cupboards are stocked. Just last night we had a chili, cheese and pudding party with some of our American friends here. I found some dry kidney beans the other day walking through this really incredible market behind the Potala. About the 3/4ths the size of a football field and under a metal roof, it had everything. And I’m not kidding when I say everything – live ducks and chickens in cages stacked tall, live fishes of all sorts in various sized tanks, live water eels slithering around their colorful buckets, live turtles and frogs sitting placidly in their containers awaiting their fates, live rabbits nibbling away at their last meal of lettuce; there were butchers galore hacking away, selling choice cuts of flesh as well as every other imaginable part of the pig, yak or cow; next was the sauces and spices section – chili, clove, pepper, anise, cardamom, turmeric, sugar, salt, and the ever-present weijin (MSG), where the smells were pungent and stimulating; and then there was the very colorful and appetizing vegetable section, where I lingered for an hour looking at all the varieties of potatoes, tomatoes, spinach, boc choy, celery, lettuce, squash, pumpkin, bell peppers, garlic, onions, ginger, and my favorite oyster mushrooms! I gazed upon these colorful wonders with mixed feelings. On one hand, I am SO HAPPY to see so many different types of vegetables available here (makes me really wonder about the beginning of my carnivorous habits again), but on the other hand, I know that all of these veggie delights were chemically and artificially grown a few miles east in those hundreds of greenhouses I saw from the top of the mountain. Dilemma – there are lots of veggies but they are all socked full of pesticides, hormones and preservatives. I guess my organic standards are a little hard to maintain at 10,500 feet at the end of winter, huh? Damn! But you know what’s interesting? The main reason I became a vegetarian was in protest of the American meat and poultry standards of processing – the feed lots, the slaughterhouses, the cages, the lack of ‘free-range’, the hormones, etc. Here, basically all of the meat is free-range organic. The yak comes from the nomads up in the mountains, the chicken and duck come from farms located outside the city where (as far as I know) there are no cages and the pig, well, fuck the swine….I still can’t eat any animal that rolls around in it’s own shit. Anyway, back to the beans…..this whole tangent started because I found beans (not coffee, but kidney) and I made chili. Wow! It had been since before we left the States since any of us had eaten real beans (I don’t count dal or lentils). It was delicious! And one of our invited guests had just received a care package of various cheeses –
I’m kidding about the Potala. It is a big deal, as I’ve said before. But damn….cheese…..
The spring is trying to poke its head out here, but there have been many mornings when we leave the hotel when there is a fresh coating of whiteness on the peaks surrounding the valley. Such a beautiful site! But makes for fairly chilly days and cold nights still. Which reminds me, this is a sadly funny story - before we left, we mailed to ourselves here a stack of art magazines for the art department and artists here (Thank you Art Papers! www.artpapers.com or .org), a set of flannel sheets for the bed, an electric blanket and some tin of Aztec hot chocolate (chocolate and cayenne like the Aztecs used to drink it – very yummy!). We mailed it M bag, which is media rate. And for the 40 lbs it was it only cost us 40$ to ship to
We’ll see if we can find someone to repair it, but the outlook is grim….
If the Potala is the symbol of the Tibetans, then the Jokhang is the heart. Literally meaning the building of the Jo, it is the spiritually center for all for all of
Rising early on the morning of the full moon (March 14th), the last day of Losar, Leigh took me to meet the Jo (as the statue is called) for the first time. Making our way through the maze of winding alleys between our hotel and the Jokhang (we are living in the old Tibetan neighborhood) in the pre-dawn light, we joined the throng of pilgrims and locals doing kora around the temple. The feeling of anticipation and curiosity sat strongly on me as I also felt a powerful sense of how old this building is, how many millions of pilgrims have traveled thousands of miles over the many centuries, and what a small part of this sacred community of devout I was at that moment. Passing the hundreds of constantly prostrating souls at the main doors, we entered the temple complex and immediately went to get in line for the inner sanctuary, where the Jo is housed. Fortunately, we had timed it right and our early hour entry insured us of a very small line to get in. In just another hour or two the line would be out the door and wrapping around the building, the wait to see the Jo would be over 4 hours. Once inside the butter lamp illuminated temple, we began our shuffling procession through the many various side rooms, giving small donations, and paying homage to others in the long line of Tibetan Buddhism lineage. Passing underneath archways and pillars that were dated to the 7th century, my ego took a backseat to my humbleness and appreciation and honor at being here. In all the time we spent in the temple and all the beautiful faces we encountered inside the sanctum, we were the only white people to be seen. The short line outside was misleading because there were still hundreds of people on the inside in a shuffling line of devout, prayer murmuring pilgrims. Following the course clockwise around, we eventually came to the main statue room, the Jo room. With many prostrating directly in front of the statue and the majority of the rest in attendance shuffling around, we were caught in the throng and pushed along into the statue room. Before making our circle around, we offered kata and touched our forehead to the left leg and had a small moment to gaze in wonder at the most sacred image in all of
That night, with visions of ancient Buddhas floating in my mind, I drifted off to a restless slumber with the sounds of celebratory fireworks echoing across the city in my ears.
