.
Well, the house has emptied out as the rest of the family makes a trek to New Jersey and a gathering for Thanksgiving. It's a cold, raw, grey day, but the wood stove is kicking out a heat worth being thankful for. With age, I am less inclined to make energetic trips. I've laid in some good food for later and have a copy of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" which I would like to watch again ... all 228 minutes of it, assuming I can find the energy. Also, "The Godfather" is on television, so I am not short of enjoyable entertainment.
And I do wish those who are celebrating Thanksgiving, a happy and over-stuffed holiday.
It's nice to have a holiday that draws attention -- however thinly -- to thanks.
Thanks.
.
Thanks, even if. Thanks, genkaku.
ReplyDeleteThanks genkaku, if. Thanks genkaku.
ReplyDeleteThanks for you and for this blog which enriches my day every day often more than once a day. I hope that health challenges ease a bit--at 62 post a couple of surgeries and the ritual of taking morning meds a bit more onerus, I can feel the big surrender underway. Though you might like this poem by Robert Cording--there's another one, Gift, I couldn't find that is in the same vein but of a man dying of cancer--just lovely. Here's Gratitude with appreciation:
ReplyDeleteGratitude
In his prison letters, Bonhoeffer is thankful
for a hairbrush, for a pipe and tobacco,
for cigarettes and Schelling’s Morals Vol. II.
Thankful for stain remover, laxatives,
collar studs, bottled fruit and cooling salts.
For his Bible and hymns praising what is
fearful, which he sings, pacing in circles
for exercise, to his cell walls where he’s hung
a reproduction of Durer’s Apocolypse.
He’s thankful for letters from his parents
and friends that lead him back home,
and for the pain of memory’s arrival,
his orderly room of books and prints too far
from the nightly sobs of a prisoner
in the next cell whom Bonhoeffer does not know
how to comfort, though he believes religion
begins with a neighbor who is within reach.
He’s thankful for the few hours outside
in the prison yard, and for the half-strangled
laughter between inmates as they sit together
under a chestnut tree. He’s thankful even
for a small ant hill, and for the ants that are
all purpose and clear decision. For the two
lime trees that mumble audibly with the workings
of bees in June and especially for the warm
laying on of sun that tells him he’s a man
created of earth and not of air and thoughts.
He’s thankful for minutes when his reading
and writing fill up the emptiness of time,
and for those moments when he sees himself
as a small figure in a vast, unrolling scroll,
though mostly he looks out over the plains
of ignorance inside himself. And for that,
too, he’s thankful: for the self who asks,
Who am I?—the man who steps cheerfully
from this cell and speaks easily to his jailers,
or the man who is restless and trembling
with anger and despair as cities burn and Jews
are herded into railroad cars—can
without an answer, say finally, I am thine,
to a God who lives each day,
as Bonhoeffer must, in the knowledge
of what has been done, is still being done,
his gift a refusal to leave his suffering, for which,
even as the rope is placed around his neck
and pulled tight, Bonhoeffer is utterly grateful.
Homage to My Father
ReplyDeleteBy Ray Ronci
HOMAGE TO MY FATHER
My father said:
Fuck Father Farrell,
what does he know, that old bastard!
Study all the religions. Learn Italian.
See Venizia, Firenze, talk
to all kinds of people
and never, never think you know more
than someone else! Unless,
unless they're full of shit.
And if they are, tell them;
and if they still don't get it, fuck it,
there's nothing you can do about it.
Learn how to bake bread.
If you can make pasta and bake bread
you can always feed your family,
you can always get a job.
Keep your house clean
and don't worry what anyone else does.
Cut your grass,
prune your fruit trees
or they'll die on you.
Don't drink too much
but don't always be sober --
it makes you nervous.
A couple glasses of wine,
some anisette now and then,
a cigar never hurt nobody.
Nervous people always got an ache here,
an ache there, they get sick,
they die --
Look at Father Farrell:
he'll be dead in a year.
Fuck him!
Perfect--another Robert Cording poem:
ReplyDeleteMy Uncle's Parrot
It's the voice I hear, the one that comes
When my talk suddenly becomes preachy,
And my class of freshmen begin to nod
Their heads in assent as I'm delivering
Some grand moral claim for Wordsworth's
Leech-gatherer, or declaring there is a way
To live out our lives hopeful and happy.
Or it comes when my wife, stepping
From a bath, her neck and belly and legs
Diamonded in the bathroom light, stands
Before me like some St. Agnes Eve vision,
And I believe that, yes, our bodies are
For climbing that ladder from pleasure
To pleasure upwards to the sublime.
Or when I see on the late night news
How a whole town, businesses included,
Turns out to re-erect a block of
Tornado-tossed houses and think we could
Learn to live in just that state of love,
The beginning of what could be
Endlessly multiplying loaves and fish.
Or even when late at night, alone,
Reading a good book and listening to
Vivaldi's oboes, a cup of tea warming
My hands, I suddenly think, then and there,
That everything in my life has only had
The illusion of significance, that
The truth is absolute meaninglessness.
At all those times and more, I hear
The point-blank voice of my uncle's parrot
Say, bullshit, the only word he could
Ever teach it, though the parrot possessed
An unerring sense of timing,
A pitch-perfect ear for the exact moment
In the conversation when its shrill trumpet
Was required: bullshit, it blared again
And again with the authority of a god
Who knew, as Pascal said, how to keep faith
And doubt off balance as he went on
Balancing both sides of every equation.
Bless this food and those who eat it, amen!
ReplyDeleteTo Genkaku & All On This Thanksgiving Day 2010:
ReplyDeleteIt was also a beautiful grey day here in Central New York. I took a walk along a creekside at Mill Run Park - it was all that I needed. Alas, the hips are getting painful.
First, I, too am thankful for this blog which does replenish me every day as well.
Second, thanks to all for everyone's postings today. I am especially glad to see Bonhoeffer's thanks reprinted here. Would that I could be so grateful!
Now,
My plate is now empty,
My hunger is satisfied.
I am determined to live for the benefit of all beings.
Happy Thanskgiving,
Linda
Thanks for introducing me to the poetry of Robert Cording, most interesting. Snowed in past few days so I re-acquainted myself with the wisdom of Aldous Huxley and found the following while searching for his essay - The Best Picture- Piero's Resurrection,
ReplyDelete"..in religion all words are are dirty words. Anyone who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soap"
while these words are from his last novel "Island" and I am unsure how I got there but thought I'd share it, most sobering even if you are not drinking.
Belated Thanksgiving wishes.
Zen practice is the carbolic soap we all clean up with.
ReplyDelete