Like some Borscht Belt comedian belting out one-liners, my mind seemed to be filled with bits of unconnected stuff this morning ... like tiny flecks of mica twinkling without much connection to the other particles of sand on a beach:
-- A bad day for chump change.
-- Everyone is reduced to fiction and those who ask "who is reduced?" only compound the fact.
-- Looking down at her sleeping companion, Doris realized that the innuendos had worked and that innuendo was a profoundly sorrowful way of life. She longed to say the words that might break the spell, but every mind-word that arose was just another innuendo that worked.
-- Today, the local newspaper's front page is consumed with death: Former first lady Betty Ford died at 93; a couple killed in a head-on crash are mourned; and two of three dairy farmers in a hill-town community are going out of business, victims of their own old age and the indifference of others.
Everyone is born and yet birth is news. Everyone dies and yet death is news. Everyone lives a life of beauty and error ... and that too is news. News is credited with reporting the unknown and the exceptional and yet every bit of news seems incapable of fulfilling its mission.
My Zen teacher's teacher, Soen Nakagawa Roshi, once said, "There is birth and there is death. In between, there is enlightenment." Shit! -- another newsman....
He also painted this calligraphy, which I friend turned into a jpeg for me:
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| Hana -- Flower | . |
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