When I heard his poetry...

When I heard his poetry,
I wondered what became of those
poems I hid, tucked away
in different parts of my body.

There was the poem about
scraping my finger as a kid,
hidden on a knuckle,
and a poem about the pencil
lead stuck below my eye
from the third grade.

Everyday I'd pull one out
from my heart, and innocently
wonder where it had
come from... a whisper,
so to speak, that I could
hear so clearly

until, wanting them to come
out just a little better,
I took a "workshop" from
a pro, and didn't write
a poem again.

P.S. If you are wondering what the drawing has to do with the poem... well, don't waste your time. Other than one being done right after the other one, they are very distant relatives... by marriage, perhaps.

What shall we do tomorrow, what shall we ever do?

Title from the Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. As I drove to the zen center tonight, I wondered what I'd write about today. In fact, when I woke this am, I wondered what I would write about.

The ad is back on my website, since my friend never said that she was offended. I finally found a source to sell a civil war flintlock that I've had since a kid, so now I can buy an ipad... and now wondering if I should wait for the next version. Nothing very interesting to write about.

After sitting tonight, the director of the zen center gave a "way-seeking" (spiritual growth) talk. I've known him for over a year, yet didn't know what to expect. In fact, I had such a premonition that I needed to go that I cancelled another engagement to be there.

He told his story and it was very beautiful. He knocked my socks off.

If he had more secrets than those he told us I'd be surprised. Imagine letting it all out. All your secrets. Out!!! How freeing that must be. Yesterday I talked about nakedness and clothes. When you tell your secrets you are naked, but soon people see that you are real, and you can then wear who you really are. And he told my secrets, and your secrets too. We do all have the same secrets, with just minute variations.

My favorite aunt Reggie (a psychotherapist) talked to me once about stories. She said that we all have our stories, but sometimes we need to look at the self behind the story. Maybe we think of the story as our secret, where really it is our self that is our secret. What does it really mean to be honest? Totally completely honest? Would it be about the candy you stole when you were a kid (funny, I remember thinking about stealing... but I don't remember if I did or not). Or would it be about something far more profound?

Stories, and then more stories, and then strip those away, and what's left? That's really naked. Who we are when our clothes are off, our confessions have be exhumed, and nothing but the truth is left. Nothing but who we really, really are. Naked.

Why not Sit Alone?

She wrote, "I sat for an hour yesterday in a chair. I don't understand why a person should sit in a group when they can sit at home, longer? Then there is no driving. Drive to the center, take shoes off, go in, sit, put shoes back on, leave. To me going to the center is just for people who lack the discipline to meditate at home."

Yesterday I wrote about Marina's exhibit at MOMA. The figures, in meditative postures (maybe trances would be a better word), were nude. No, naked. No, nude. Oh, I don't know. Models are nude, strippers are naked.

As I sat today, I was doan. It is the person who faces everyone who is facing the walls and rings the bells for the sitting and the service (I'm really a beginner at this role). I though about the question above as I sat and looked at the "sitters."

Earlier I was talking about the issue with a priest and the director of the zen center. I said that I thought sitting was much more intimate than talking. Sometimes it seems we talk in order to hide what we are feeling. Like clothes. When we sit, we are naked. Intimacy in zen is enlightenment. And I suspect part of enlightenment is seeing one's connection with all. Therefore... therefore... therefore...

It appeared to me that some, though literally sitting with others, might be just sitting by and for themselves. But part of sitting is that we are sitting for others as well as for ourselves. The pain in my leg is the pain of suffering throughout Earth. The joy of a deep breath that makes a pleasant journey in and out of me is the joy of someone seeing a newborn emerge from their mother's womb. Sitting is not a solitary activity, no matter where it is done.

In one day, according to a fellow sangha member's blog, 40000 thoughts pass through our head. We are naked when we are sitting because those thoughts are now revealed to us. Nothing is between who we are and who we pretend to be.

We feel the presence of others in the room. Sometimes we hear them wiggle a little, or cough, or hear their stomach's growling.

But still, why would we want to be in a room naked with others? Or are we really with others (who are actually other parts of ourselves), linked together by a web? I read a description once of a number of monks going into a three month practice period (wrote about this recently as well) and they were told to think of themselves as oarsmen on a ship. If they didn't all keep rowing, the ship wouldn't make it to their destination.

Is sitting a social activity? It certainly isn't a cocktail party, where we have the tendency to wear a lot of clothes, hoping to hide our secrets.

Some of us feel like we need our daily sit. It is our chance to share very private moments with our selves, and with each other.

I don't think I really answered the question. But maybe that's ok. This article, Why We Chant, seems to say well some of the joy in sitting together.

Waiting

How many times do we sit out the weekend, waiting for the moment of truth on Monday? Well, Monday in England is Bank Day, a national holiday, which I assume is why I didn't hear from the marketing woman about my Miracle Ear ad.

I saw an amazing Marina Abramovich retrospective exhibit exhibit at MOMA in NYC last week. I was very curious to know about the role of meditation in Marina's pieces... and so I was so glad to be sent a link to this article. We've come a long way in a short time that such work can be exhibited. When I lived in Dallas for three years in the 70s I had five issues with censorship. A few were with my work, the others with exhibits I curated. At the Univ. of Illinois in the 60s the male models wore "jock straps." A graduate student, Myra Cantor, sent the school into a tizzy displaying male nudes in her thesis exhibit.

Tonight I heard Norman Fischer for the third time in three days. It was a meeting for the business community of Austin. He spoke about meditation practice (calling it mindfulness) in business. He's the meditation guru for Google. He handled questions from the audience so skillfully and honestly too. You can hear 100s of his lectures on the web. Super wonderful person.

This afternoon I heard on the web a talk he gave about God parting the seas to save the Jews. I thought that God was pretty mean to the Egyptians (killing them all).

Before the talk Norman came over to where I was standing, looking at this incredible transparent building being built. I told him that God wasn't nice to the Romans (killing them all after splitting the waters). He corrected me and said Egyptians. Next time I'm at a Passover dinner celebrating the event, I'm going to ask everyone to say a prayer for them, even if they did enslave the Jews.

Called my Sister

Here. Zen is about hereing (sic) now. Get a hereing (sic) aid. 

I want to be here,  he said.

So I called my sister and she said that I should keep the ad for the hearing aids because so many people need them. Judging from the sound of her voice, she felt there was a moral imperative here to take the blood money (we don't refund money, she said) and support the cause of hearing aids for the hard of hearing.

I do have another sister, though, in case I need another opinion. In the meantime, I'm waiting for the ad firm in England to open up shop in a few hours.

Next planet I live on is going to be easier. There will be one answer to all questions and that answer will be obvious, right from the start. I had an aunt who'd give me answers like that until she became wiser. Now she has moved on.

And everyone on this other planet will be compassionate, even the men.

Knife and Spoon

I would tell my photo students that Henri Cartier-Bresson was great at composing photos. Once, when I was teaching at SMU in the 70s, Dan Barsotti raised his hand and contradicted me, saying that he saw Bresson photographing in Paris and he just held the camera above his head and shot ("quick quick quick" (as Bresson would say with his French accent)). Anyway, I was talking to Stephanie at a brunch this am and talking about the magic of life. Then I brought my phone up to the table and turned it on... and this picture was on the screen. I just had to press the button.

Blood Money and Hearing Aids

My hearing aids are pretty small but some-times they feel very large.
[Buy "No Wax"]

A week or so ago I received an email from a English marketing firm that they wanted to give me either $150 or $100 if I would put an ad on my website. A gaming ad would be $150 and an ad in a number of other categories would be $100.

I'm trying to earn enough money for an ipad. Which doesn't justify blood money, does it?

So in the midst of taking these Buddhist precepts, I entered questionable territory here. Not advertising in itself... but ... read on.

They asked me to rewrite a paragraph on my website about my friend Joan Lipkin, who works with the disabled in theatre. They came up with this paragraph:

As the Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri, she specializes in creating work with marginalized populations including people with disabilities, from those with digital hearing aids to those who are wheelchair bound, LGBT youth and women with breast cancer that are accompanied by civic dialogue with the wider community.

They added "digital hearing aids" and made it a link to a vendor of such things.

Then they sent me $100.

So I sent them a letter (just now...):

Janet,

I'm wondering if we could try a different ad. This one is misleading since Joan Lipkin might not work with people with digital hearing aids. I took off this ad, feeling like it would not do justice to her or to Miracle Ear.

Thanks,

Kim

I used to pose this question to the advertising design students. "Suppose you were asked to do a campaign for something that hurt people (cigarettes, for example)... would you do so?" Most answered, "yes." And then I'd tried to persuade them that they shouldn't. Some would switch to fine arts... and others would go on and have successful (design) careers.

So I'll let you know what Janet sends me next. It should be interesting... and probably costly to me.

Who needs an ipad anyway?

I remember one of the early computer graphic pioneers the we invited to the college. He held up a pencil and said, "really, nothing will every be more sensitive than this."

More later, when Monday comes around in England.