Poet or not

This book is for anyone who has ever had to think if they could/should write or not. On a general note, if anybody had to sit and think if what they are doing is what they really want to do , they could glean some inspiration that all the questions that arise will lead you to 'worth the effort' results , if pursued, that can make a difference to your and many other lives.

Sep 19. 2005

Books are for

DHL has a very consistent way of writing. Each of his book only adds to the superset of his way of thinking.
This book has very few characters but strong ones at that. You can derive your philosophy from them. They can do the living at an abstraction which seems the most appealing to those who always look at the 'true core' of things. The characters will go through all the travails that are the outcome of an impossible living and finally descend back to the ground.
There are a gamut of feelings that can be felt by a man, its not possible to experience them all by ourselves and this book is one such, which lets you live the life of such intense people within the covers.
Miriam's character, as a person who draws life out of all things worth appreciating by vaccuming their essence into her, like say smelling the flowers so barbarously that they are devoid of their fragrance...
In today's life , where conversation cannot go beyond everyday needs, its hard to recognise such different traits in people. DHL's characters are so different. The feelings they have, the way they reconciliate to them.. how they realise that they go beyond the flesh and are more related in spirit .. making transactions in this not-ordinary space and then having the practicality to realise that life cant be lived like that .. the point abut how 'feeling life like souls' but 'need to live like humans'..
Oct 11, 2005

Push cart 2010

I want to speak for just one essay - 'The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies' by Sallie Jiko Tisdale.In the essayists words it is a rewrite of Dogen's Sutra of Mountains and Waters as a natural history of flies, in Buddhist terms. I read this essay last night. And today I could make something of a housefly. I saw the four stripes on its gray thorax. I saw the 'halteres'. If I can tell that much of a fly, it has to be a dead one with its limbs detaching at the slightest touch. The fly is on a path of decay. The essay not only leaves you with the knowledge of what happens to our bodies when we die but it goes into suffering identified by Buddha.
It is a long essay. If you cant get your hands on it, you should read the excerpts of it on 'Dharma Rain'. [...]. After reading this essay I was reminded of an essay 'Not found Not Lost' by Joel Agee.

Other essays that I liked and recognized from magazines: 'Time and Distance overcome' by Eula Biss and 'How to succeed in Po Biz' by Kim Addonizio

Jul 17,2010

A poem by its other name

This poem with title 'race' had me guessing the end with some injustice. Race is such a high power word that it masks its homonymity.
Homonym

A summer day

we felt a cool breeze
like we were by the beach
As unbelievable as the mirage
it did happen

poems

Both these poems have been used as epigrams in Anne Lamott's 'traveling Mercies' book.

Another quote used in the same book.

Spider Monkeys

I wasnt prepared for a shrunk image of monkeys at the Monkey Village. In 'Wild Justice', a study, it was interesting to read of one of the priviliges of affiliative behavior. A point that I liked in this book of two opposing concepts of Darwin's survival of the fittest and Kropotkin's Mutual Aid's role in evolution.
Phoenix zoo had whistling ducks too in the exhibit as both come from the same South America.
Unwanted Norway rats. Hanta Virus.

Listen to your author

What is the difference between an accomplished writer and one who is interested in writing? For one, he can say what a novice only thinks he wants to say and two he can convince that it had to be said. He can write what he thinks and just call it a book. Although I would not call it a book in the regular sense, I would like to read what an author like him thinks. Is he the thinker who writes?
Moral of the story. Man has made a big mess of the earth. Not new to our knowledge. But authors writing on an issue in current life makes them so easy to relate to.
12.31.05

Yesterday's question

Reading of a book in NYTimes, I wonder what might ethics in archaeology refer to. Terry Tempest in Refuge with her frequent digs, hints in pg 190 and I get that the excavators could appropriate the digs before they get into Museum Inventory Management System