Tag: being
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Quotes for Today
“We speak of nature, of the natural world, as if that were something distinct from ourselves and the social world we appear to have made, seldom noticing that we are in nature and never out of it…” – John Haines, “Fables and Distances” I do not strive to be better than you, or anyone. My…
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Fragmenting Path
A few months ago, I found myself moving beyond my physical and mental limits. Limits I was not aware of until they surfaced and began pushing back and against the space I was within. After hours squeezed into a sea kayak, paddling from Decision Point to Blackstone Glacier, beneath low, grey and heavy clouds, consistently…
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Every End Leads to a Beginning
The last day of September leads quietly into October. Summer takes one last swipe before fall takes the reins. The afternoon sun is bright and unfiltered – adding a golden glow around each leaf and blade of grass. Every ending, marks the beginning of something, a continuation perhaps of the previous story, or a fresh…
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Poem – Where is the Path?
The burning city settles below the horizon as evening darkens trees and empty streets. ~ Lost into haze I let go and allow instincts to guide me through each day, unaware of each step and each mile that passes, I arrive and I leave this space. ~ I see black shadows across the ceiling, in…
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Poem – Transition
Everything has changed since leaving the land of the midnight sun. Squishy, my thoughts have become – what was light and free before, has taken on dreams interwoven with a landscape and all the life and history inhabiting each grain of sand, each droplet, and boulder cast from the mountain top. An evolution in thoughts…
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Random Thoughts
Fall has taken over Minnesota and what on average are the hottest days of the year, has become 50s and rain. A taste of early fall perhaps, and then a head-first plunge into winter, my favorite season. As I have written about before, cold weather, and in particular winter, is when awareness of ourself becomes…
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Reasons
Here I am in MN, when I was supposed to be in Ashford, WA. Mt. Rainier was to be the actual mountain, the manifestation of goals and purpose, and the journey to reach the top, and survey the landscape, looking for the next to overcome. It seems my physical being had other plans, and I…
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Poem – Awake
I lie awake at night and during the day and I think of the opportunities I have passed and I have missed. I think of the infinite lives, intersection points and how one small decision, detail, or word changes the path, changes the course, changes who I am. I lay upon the wood picnic table…
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Time
Where has time gone? While I know time itself does not change, only our perception, I must have been asleep for a few days. It is already May and I have not really written a poem or prose in a couple of weeks. I have spent some time in quiet reflection of my past and…
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Poem – Self
The following poem is from a conversation with Hanakia Zedek regarding Zen and takes place through a series of poems. Questions are asked, along with a poem, and the response is a poem addressing each question. Self (1) Standing on the blue cliff on one side of the valley dividing mountain ranges tiled with a…
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Poem – For Patricia
I see a stone path through the graying clouds this near November day. I remember the day smothered by black clouds torn from the sky. I watched you dance in the cold rain pooling with no care of those watching. Swirling faster as the rain fell harder until collapsing in a heap. Perfect silence as…
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Poem – Winter’s Last Stand
Listening to Hildur Gudnadottir as winter makes a last stand and we retreat indoors to watch this spectacle and hear the pine trees bending against the cabin roof. Liquid dreams caught in rabid waves the grayish sea with green and blue deep undertones blends into the sky. Seagulls and ravens aloft squint as ice pellets…
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Searching and Finding
Surrounded by Zen and Buddhism magazines, books reviews, and the latest issue of Edge Magazine, I pause for a moment. What am I looking for? Is there a concrete reason all of these words, images, advice, poems, other peoples lives, surround me? What do I take from this? I continue my studies of Zen Master…
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Today’s music and other thoughts
Today is brought to you by the electronic/dub-step band Nero and their album “Welcome Reality”. In effort to let my mind wander and escape for a couple of hours, I watched the movie “Expendables 2”. Definitely nothing that would win an Oscar in any shape or form, but mind numbing action. To much in my…
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Back to writing
A lot in the world is going on, and many events or significant milestones have passed. Ideas and snippets pass through my mind like water, and it is difficult to choose which to fish out and write about. What kind of tone should I take, and what, at the end of the day, do I…