Saturday, March 14, 2015

Perfection: One Leg Shorter than the Other

Kim Mosley
I once had a teacher in college who asked me, “isn’t it terrible being as stupid as you are?” To which I replied, “Oh, not at all, I have so much to learn.” It is much easier when you don't know anything. If everyone had one leg shorter than the other they wouldn't look down at their own legs with disdain. But they do know. When they buy a pair of shoes they discover they have to buy two pairs of shoes… or lop off some toes, or go to a speciality shop.  

I've returned to taking pictures with a real camera rather than an iPhone. I had to have the perfect camera. Well, not exactly. But at least a really good one. But now the question arises: what pictures should I be making?

I forgot that with real cameras, when you shoot in low light, only part of the picture is sharp. I did a picture of a bouquet of bananas and my wife complained that the stem was out of focus. I had missed out of focus. There is a term bokeh that refers to how a lens renders something out of focus. My lens is suppose to do that well. I love the soft look of things. It reminds me of how tentative we are. We don't really stop here or there. We are mostly hot air. And when we have a fever, we are even a little warmer.

But back to the challenge of photography. Such a simple idea of walking around with this box and telling it to "shoot" at just the right time. But when is that?

So I’ve had it with focusing. My camera only has manual focus and it is a little hard to see whether I'm in focus or not, so I ordered some focusing screen from Taiwan that is suppose to improve that. But in the mean time, I remembered that a student used to call infinity “eternity,” so I wondered why don't I just focus on eternity and let everthing else fall where they are. So what is close to me will be bokehed, and what is far will be sharp. I gave it a try and my wife said “scary.”

P.S. I got the focusing screen from Taiwan, but alas, I’m told it won’t fit in my camera. As to not focusing, I was showing my pics to a friend today and when she saw the out of focus pictures she said, “Ugh, out of focus.”

Monday, February 16, 2015

His Imperative

In response to “imperative” by Steven Schroeder.


So his practice,
shouting blessed day,
was not so
anyone would hear.

It was bitter cold.

his mouth
was frozen shut—
he could only mean
the words.

His hat, begging
for coins,
remained cold
and empty.

What was blessed
about this day?

Was it
his practice?
His intention?
His trying to share?

Did it matter
he was frozen,
yet blessed?

Sunday, February 1, 2015

In the Dark

"They are not rearranging the room. They are turning on a light to see what's there.” From The Hidden Lamp

I often think of change as altering my environment. Yesterday I quit eating meat. This morning I found a new place for my old printer so I could have a place for a new one.

The confusion I have about turning on a light is what to do if you don't like what is illuminated by the light. I saw the meat as dead stuff entering my body, and saw that my printer needed to be moved to make a place for a new (bigger) printer.

Am I missing the Zen idea of accepting the world as it is? Or maybe after illuminating the meat, I notice that its life force expired some time ago. And illuminating my room I see that there is no space for my new printer.

But what if I illuminate myself? What would I see? What would I accept? And what, now illuminated, would I want to change?

P.S. After writing this, our Zen teacher walked in and asked us why we were in the dark. I said that we were reading about illumination. She flicked on the lights—way too bright for my eyes.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Anxiety Disorder

1. If I had an
anxiety disorder
I'd be worried

if things were
peachy like
once I had a

car accident
and I called my
father.

"Dad," I said,
"good news,
I'm not going

to have a 2nd
car accident
today," and

"don't count
on it," he
replied, cautiously.


2. The fox found
the most delicious
grapes in the world,

only to discover
that he couldn't
reach them

and didn't want
them anyway
or so the story goes.


3. The potter sees
an opportunity when
the pot breaks and smiles.

Dragged by her hubby's car,
my sister made it through
the dinner that followed.


4. God was in a vessel,
as big as everything.
Then he smashed the

vessel to make room
for you and me ...
and now we must

put the pieces
together, which might
be why nothing

runs that smoothly,
esp. when we expect it
to be unbroken.


5. The power
in our house went out
the other day

and I laughed,
remembering how earlier
attempts to give

my daughter and her hubby
an evening out
ended in a mini-disaster.

Monday, January 26, 2015

No way, José!

Prompt: “Coffee Break,” by Kwame Dawes

No way, José!
Is life
this short?

Yesterday I had
my yearly checkup
with the eye doc.

And then
today
had the next one.

I don't think
we had aged, either
he nor I.

The balloon man
waited for coffee,
and it was too late.

First time I read it as
he'd skipped out, which
I guess he did,

in his own way,
leaving his balloons
on his still chair.

Was his lap his lap?
Does condensed or cow's milk
even matter.

In retrospect,
we'd do
things so differently.

Much differently!

I did something
bad
almost 50 years ago.

If only I could go
back in a
time machine,

slightly wiser,
and make some
better choices.

What was I
thinking?
Or was I?

It would have
been so easy just to
choose cow's milk.

Who would complain?

I could have just thought
a little of the consequences
of my actions.

Or, to save a dime,
I wrote instead of called...
and it was too late.

When you are on
a speeding train,
it doesn't take long to be late.

The eye doc said,
which is better,
a or b, and I'd blink,

and ask him
to show me a and b
over and over again.

Life is that
short.
Isn't it?

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Gifts


Gratitude hasn’t been a good word for me. It, like giving, had some bad implications. But lately I’ve been aware of some phenomenal gifts I’ve been receiving when taking a picture.

Something will catch my eye and I’ll go to take a picture. Most of my pictures are done with an iPhone. When I look on the “ground glass” I usually see something that hadn’t caught my eye but becomes part of the picture. In fact, here it was my shadow, which wasn’t even there until I stepped towards the table. “Oh, a gift!” I’d say to myself. But like most gifts, I'd have to “put it away.” So the composition has to change a little to accompany the shadow.

Then there are gifts when I view my picture in an editing program. First I see the blue cloth, then the styrofoam cup and container. Lastly, I see the little blue doorway under the table.

I suppose a good photographer might have seen all these in that moment where she saw something to photograph. But I did not.

There are gifts in all areas of my life. As much as we appreciate those whom we love, they do things time and again that we don't expect. My daughter wrote a beautiful poem the other day about her childhood. It was a gift to see what she remembered and what shaped her into the beautiful person she has become. Over and over again, gifts are falling from trees and sprouting up from the ground. Just now, I’m looking at the shutters in my window and seeing how this soft gentle light is coming into my room, and into my life so peacefully and perfectly.

Yes, I feel gratitude for these gifts.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

God

Why is it that we talk about belief in God as a yes or no? I used to think it was some gauge of whether a person had a brain or not. Most of us believe in love and beauty, yet they may not "exist" in a physical sense. So to with "God." As we acknowledge that God is a belief, we put her in the box with love and beauty. She is real in that sense, because she is in our minds as a belief. When she did this or that, it might just be an ancient way of saying that this or that occurred. And no more than that.

Who's in the world?

Xiushan said, "What can you do about the world?" Dizang said, "What do you call the world?"