Today, a Zen friend sent me pictures of my Zen teacher's funeral in Japan. Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi died Dec. 29, 2007. And the pictures probably won't mean much to anyone else ... another dead guy in a world of dead guys ... who could keep track of them all?
But of course to me, it's all like the smell of warm apple pie, echoing in the halls of memory and affection and yum. I am ashamed when I fall prey to my own memory glands, salivating over an apple pie that was ...
And remains...
Alive.
I look at his funeral picture and wonder, how the hell did he ever get so old?! In my mind, he is youthful and peppy as a Mexican jumping bean, full of a piss and vinegar I never knew as well as I might have...and yet knew well enough. The last time I saw him, I asked if I might take a picture of him. "No," he replied. "I am getting old." But not so old that he couldn't be as vain as the rest of us. Oh well, he was a nonpareil ... just like the rest of us.
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