Sunday, November 30, 2008



The dojo was rather a puzzle yesterday morning. Stalks of bamboo, cleanly cut as though with a blade, laid in fanned clusters. There was a red votive candle in the middle of the field. The plain clear glass holder had a wedge broken out of it. A small untouched cellophane bag of animal crackers, damp from drizzle, lay near the peeling wood door which is a permanent fixture in one corner. (Flat on the ground, the door works as a table for jacket, or keys, or bokuto.) Perhaps people had camped out there, created rough mats of bamboo as a cushion from the hard ground. They'd discovered a pocket of wilderness in the city.

But the one find during sword that pushed me to fetch my camera at the end of practice was the old smashed glasses.

(This is odd subject matter for a blog, isn't it? When I could write of more important matters, family matters or state of the planet or beautiful Jupiter and Venus fast approaching their rendezvous. But it's late, and the smashed glasses are what I've got.)

Saturday, November 29, 2008





Friday, November 28, 2008

Thursday, November 27, 2008



A stranger was welcomed and fed.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008




Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Monday, November 24, 2008






"Man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities
vanish." Jean de la Fontaine

to be so dancing
this 11:30 night
groceries in arms
the fat strawberries
the spiced hot tea
the chain link of women
so made
breath of fire
impossible
possible
to love life
from the ground floor
to see stars
in the pyre
of living dying

Sunday, November 23, 2008


Cosmic jokes abound, he said...

Saturday, November 22, 2008


It's a scruffy piece of land between the apartment complex and a small Citi bank. Bordered by oaks, a stand of bamboo, and the Barton Creek watershed, it fronts onto Lamar Boulevard. There have been doves, a harrier, a black fuzzy cat. A jogger, a guy on a bike, an elderly man in a black coat. A silver Chris Chicago Hot Dog trailer perches close to the street. The field was pretty trashed out when I discovered it a week and a half ago, but every morning I practice, I pick up and carry out a bag of litter. Today was the first day it really looked rather beautiful. A lot of intriguing intersections came to life.

The more you love a wild space, the more it opens up to you.

Friday, November 21, 2008


The dark time of year approaches--winter solstice a month away.

We fight our bodies with alarm clocks and electric lights. We forget we're designed in winter for darkness, to dream bear dreams.

Thursday, November 20, 2008


'If I keep the green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.'

Chinese proverb

Wednesday, November 19, 2008



opportunities fall like oranges from the trees...

Tuesday, November 18, 2008



This acorn was hanging from a burr oak in Kerrville, Texas around half past noon yesterday.

Monday, November 17, 2008

At 9 PM
a reclining Orion
was rising in the eastern sky,
soon to be his magnificent self again.
Even at rest
he commands the night;
his stars scintillate
with each sleeping breath.



8oranges

Saturday, November 15, 2008





Friday, November 14, 2008


Geese at Dusk



Thursday, November 13, 2008

Shared, furnished apartment in Austin:





How did this happen?

How did I get here?

An intersection on Craigslist on Saturday; loaded the car and put foot to pedal on Monday.

Trust, gulp, and go...

There are points in life where we're in the dark. There are points in life where we are told in glowing terms: yes, you are right where you belong for now.

Today, I came upon an enthusiastic volunteer to try out my new line of work, and a dream-idea of how everything might come together.

"If you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part."
Krishnamurti
(First posted here in mid-October, lifted from a flyer for the Shintaido fall workshop in Massachusetts.)

Wednesday, November 12, 2008


the night driver's hands
clutch the wheel;
bamboo sways,
turtles bask in the sun.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

It was a great day, driving into Austin, to hear blue-shirted John Aielli say we're in this world together, to eat Jamaican stirfry at Mother's, to find a place on Panther and Lamar, to hear the owls, the frogs and the train, to get from here to there without having to think, happy.

You let go of the trapeze, and the next one shows up.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Sunday, November 9, 2008



Do you think migrating creatures are ever faint-hearted? That it's time to swim or fly, but the thought of all that ocean, all that sky, is just too much?

Do some agree to take that first little hop, 'just one!' and then another? Or do some focus on their destination and avoid thoughts about all the miles in between? Do they ever just give up and cry? stay behind?

Do they close their eyes, scream and leap outward? Or do they finally just trust, and go?

Saturday, November 8, 2008








The caterpillar was challenging to photograph. Most of the pics I took were no good; they came up with that hard white burned look, even though the late afternoon light was gentle.

Only images of the caterpillar itself looked overexposed. The polished blades of grass didn't reflect that way. Unlike through the camera, to the naked eye, the whole caterpillar looked green.

Maybe the skin of the caterpillar is unusually reflective, designed to dazzle and confuse predators. Maybe the light emanates from the caterpillar itself. Caterpillar aura.

And the subject was traveling. It seemed to be hungry, trying to take a bite of grass or a leaf, then moving on as though, nope, this isn't what I eat. I've never seen a caterpillar like this before--and it was the only one around this afternoon.

Ain't it beautiful with the little starbursts of green? 99.9 percent of my blog photos are taken with my Sony Cyber-Shot, 4.0 megapixels, and it's been a trusty friend. But creatures like this nudge me to get something more sophisticated than a point-and-shoot, a camera with a more powerful lense that could do the caterpillar's beauty justice.

Friday, November 7, 2008



Tonight, I drove to Hub City Diner, and at some point after the gumbo when the mug of decaf was warming my hands, I saw the boy and girls in their red t-shirts with the anchors. Hope was printed on their backs. A girl at the next table was in a white shirt and brown skirt--the uniform at Mount Carmel when I was in grade school. Her one-shoed toddler sister ate french fries and stared at me.

There was a moment, the white light fixtures mirrored in the darkening windows, the red shirts, everyone (but the toddler) occupied in the business of their own tables, the space of their daily theater, as though unaware of anyone beyond. A Stevie Ray Vaughan song played on.

And then, the moment was gone. Two tables emptied. The toddler girl stuck her leg out for her mom to put her Maryjane back on her foot.


nativearthling.blogspot.com

8oranges.blogspot.com

Wednesday, November 5, 2008


Costa Rica, as an independent nation, has never known slavery. A country where compulsory basic education was established in 1869. A country where capital punishment was abolished in 1882. Costa Rica abolished its army as an institution in 1949. And, in 1983 the government declared our nation a neutral, and unarmed state, a move that contributed to the peace process in Central America.

Conflict will always arise among people. What we must learn is how to deal with that conflict without resorting to violence.

At this beginning of the twenty-first century, we are being called upon to face the needs of humanity, in all its tragic urgency. And we must, at the same time, face up to the requirements of the species: this century shall be peaceful or shall not be at all.


Rodrigo Carazo
President of Costa Rica
1978-1982
Honorary Founder of A World Without Armies

Tuesday, November 4, 2008



There were three incidents this past year of dead or dying rodents. Now that I'm the only human remaining in the house, a mouse is openly broadcasting his very alive presence. This evening, he waltzed along the kitchen wall, gave me a good look, then hurried behind the fridge. He seems healthy enough.

Monday, November 3, 2008



On the half of the earth that's daytime, the sun's magnetic field presses against earth's magnetic field. About every 8 minutes, a portal opens up, and charged particles flow from sun to earth (called a Flux Transfer Event or FTE). The portal is shaped like a cylinder, wide as the earth.

The solar wind does not offer a steady flow of energetic particles as once believed; instead, the earth expriences magnetic reconnection in these clock-like energetic bursts.

FTEs were discussed today at a meeting of physicists, the 2008 Plasma Workshop, in Huntsville, Alabama.

I wonder how FTEs interact with the biophysics of life. How does the human body experience these pulses?

Sources:
Science@NASA (2008, November 2).
Magnetic Portals Connect Sun And Earth.
ScienceDaily.

European Space Agency (2006, October 4).
Details Of Solar Particles Penetrating The Earth's Environment Revealed. ScienceDaily.


Photo is from a greeting card I received of Dale Chihuly's work. I don't have the card available right now, but it seems it may have been a Portal card:)

Sunday, November 2, 2008



The windowless room was packed with people—rows of folding chairs filled with adults of all ages, some with children at their side, some in health profession scrubbies, in dresses, in jeans and athletic jackets. There were people lining the walls and standing in the aisles. I heard a voice near me say, ‘Take a number!’ I tore a paper tab from one of those dispensers you see at a bakery or post office.

But this was early voting last Monday around 4:20 PM at the Registrar's office in Lafayette.

I looked around, trying to get oriented, and searched for a space along the back wall. Paper Halloween bats dangled from the ceiling. There were over 100 people in the room. Something was happening here. ‘This is amazing!’ I whispered as I leaned against my spot of wall. The man next to me nodded. He was texting on his cell phone. After watching people for awhile, I did the same, sending news of what was going on in a message to my sons and friends.

An elderly man and woman, poll workers, were calling for five people at a time to go through a door to a hallway. ‘966 to 970,’ he said hoarsely. ‘966 to 970,’ she repeated more firmly, so those at the back of the room could hear. I was holding 087.

Though the workers' voices sounded exhausted, their faces were childlike and awake. Who could believe, all these people in the room here to vote, calm and no signs of resentment or impatience at having to wait. There was a hum of energy. There were coworkers who discovered and greeted each other, and friends who chatted briefly. I heard no talk of politics, not a whole lot of talk at all. There seemed to be no defensiveness, no ego trips in the room, no masks. I saw fearful dismay on the faces of one couple as they arrived, but that eased as they waited. Many people had this inward look, as though they had some secret they couldn’t quite yet fathom, but couldn’t hide either. The shared current was extraordinary. We were like a very large family waiting in a hospital for the birth of a baby.

The dispenser ran out of the paper numbers, but that didn’t slow anything down. You joined a line in the hall once your number was called. I was lead to a voting cubicle over an hour after I'd arrived. There were about ten stations going at full tilt. One poll worker, her nice suit rumpled, stated that more than 1400 people had already voted that day. There were over 200 people now waiting to vote, and still an hour to go, and it wasn’t yet Voting Day.

Lafayette isn’t all that big a city.

I returned to my car, floating. Something was happening here.

As I held my key to unlock the door, I saw that only half a block ahead was the old museum, the home of a governor in the 1800s, who, like many of European descent then, owned African slaves. The house has separate kitchen/slave quarters in the back. Many of the people of Lafayette, like me, share his genes, or the genes of some of the slaves, or both. Lots of people share his name.

Many of the voters at the registrar's office were connected to him and to the people who'd had no freedom to choose where or with whom they’d live, much less freedom to vote or run for any government office. While that changed long ago, the ethnic divide that is renegotiated day in and day out across America can still be rugged.

I walked toward the museum, a three-story white house. A late afternoon breeze stirred; I touched one of the plants in the front garden.

Two blocks away, descendents of this governor and those he had 'owned' stood peacefully pressed side by side. We all now had the opportunity to vote for a stellar candidate for president of the United States. He also happens to be the first American of African descent to run as a major-party candidate for the office.

How lucky to be alive for this election, to be here in Lafayette. We waited for early voting, light shining on the shadows of the past.

Saturday, November 1, 2008