Aitken Roshi dies

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A thread on Zen Forum International announced today:

Aitken Roshi passed away yesterday, Thursday, August 5, 2010, at around 5:30 pm at Straub hospital in Honolulu. He was 93.

With many thanks!



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Hiroshima

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Aug 6, 5:34 AM (ET)

By ERIC TALMADGE
HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) - A U.S. representative participated for the first time Friday in Japan's annual commemoration of the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima, in a 65th anniversary event that organizers hope will bolster global efforts toward nuclear disarmament.

The site of the world's first A-bomb attack echoed with the choirs of schoolchildren and the solemn ringing of bells Friday as Hiroshima marked its biggest memorial yet. At 8:15 a.m. - the time the bomb dropped, incinerating most of the city - a moment of silence was observed.

Complete article
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he/she

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I was waiting my turn in the unemployment office yesterday. Across two widths of Formica-topped table sat a fellow in a well-worn T-shirt and jeans. His hair was grey at the temples and I guessed he was in his fifties -- a guy whose hands said he was not afraid to get dirty. He was waiting too.

Next to him sat what I at first took to be a young man. He was plump in a way that is common these days and he sported the clear beginnings of a goatee and mustache. His forearms were plump with muscle and fat and dappled by strong man-hair. The hair on his head hung down around his ears. It soon became apparent that he was with the guy in his fifties. The two talked in the low tones that people use in Formica-topped offices. Both seemed amicable and open and at ease with who they were.

But as they talked, I began to lose my moorings. The young man had a very feminine voice. I glanced at his chest, but could not say with certainty whether the extrusions were fat or breasts. Whatever checking I did, my eyes returned to the goatee and mustache, both of which said "male" in my head.

Finally, the young man decided to stretch his legs. He stood up, hitched up the jeans that exposed his butt crack, and walked into the hallway outside the office. Even standing up I was left guessing, as much as anything because my mind refused to get off the "male" frequency it had decided on. Still, after he returned to sit next to his dad, I gave up: This "he" was a "she." Or, if some mixture of "he" and "she," more "she" than "he." The goose-down goatee still flummoxed me a bit, but in the end my mind settled back on the fact that these were two people I somehow liked. Just pretty good people, whatever the sex.

What a deep-seated habit, the whole he/she thing. Of course it's necessary for procreation, I suppose, but otherwise ... well, what a habit. Here were two people who seemed content in their skins while I was not content in mine. I felt somehow that I had to know. But once I did know, what, precisely, did I imagine I knew and of what use was it?

I guess the usefulness was in pointing out to me what was pretty damned useless.
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another world

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Already at 3:30 a.m., the outdoors was as close and moist and glutinous as chewed taffy. The forecast is for another hot, humid day and even in the darkness I can believe it.

-- Is this true or is it just my overactive imagination? When you're young and walk down Main Street, the people you see are young -- with a sprinkling of elderly people forming a backdrop. But when you are old, Main Street is full of elderly people, with a sprinkling of young people to enliven the scene. Do we just see ourselves wherever we go or is this just a perky imagination looking for an outlet?

-- A friend was good enough to look up descriptions of "Tathagata Zen" and "Patriarchal Zen" and send them along in the wake of some earlier references we had both made. But as I read through the definitions and the regard or disregard in which each has been or is held, I found myself not caring a whole lot. It's all useful stuff in one sense (sorry, I haven't got what it takes to spell it all out), but in another sense, so what? The Zen teacher Rinzai summed things up for me when he said, "Grasp and use, but never name." Everything is useful in its time ... so, go ahead a use it. Just don't imagine that naming it has much to do with anything.

-- Interest in writing has definitely waned. The topics don't rise up as they once did and when they do rise up, the excitement is muted. I can see why other writers find books or articles or history to fluff up their prose ... let someone else do the heavy lifting... hitch a ride and make a point or two. Still, no matter how bad the writing gets, I don't imagine I will stop ... it's such an old habit, entering 'another world' ... and then finding out that it's the world you're already in.
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what's wrong with not knowing?

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Without getting into a helplessness swoon about it, isn't it amazing how much hard evidence there is that we really don't know from one moment to the next and still we imagine we do know and are in control of our lives?

The hard evidence, for example, might be seen in the the black man in neighboring Connecticut who was caught on film stealing booze from his distributor's company. He agreed yesterday without complaint to resign, and then proceeded to kill eight people and injure two before turning the gun on himself.

OK, the tale is shocking and frightening, but how much different is it from whatever is going to happen five minutes from now? I really don't know, irrespective of the Korean Zen that can drum-beat "don't know mind."

Why do I insist on doing what plainly lacks complete or even particularly compelling evidence? Would I go nuts if I didn't know? Would it be too scary? Would I be somehow less? What's wrong with not-knowing ... people, places, things, thoughts, emotions? Since the evidence points to a much wider spectrum than knowing, why do I insist on the narrow and demonstrably untrue? Even when I do guess what's going to happen, it never happens precisely as I imagined, so I end up being satisfied with pretty good guesses or approximations. That strikes me as a half-baked kind of life.

As I say, no need to get your tail in a knot. But it does strike me as a curious matter.
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the perfect teacher

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Sometimes there are deprecating glances and dismissive rejoinders when anyone admits to a wee whisper in the heart -- the whisper that longs desperately for "the perfect teacher." Unblemished, accepting and capable of overlooking the flaws I myself am so bad at overlooking.

"Every moment is the perfect teacher," I can hear someone saying. Well, maybe so, but where there are aches and cuts, who would not long to be thoroughly and completely healed? Sage nostrums can take a hike ... where do I find the perfect teacher? I'm not kidding -- I want this more than I wanted a B-B gun when I was a kid.

The perfect teacher ... the one without flaws; the one who accepts all flaws.

I like this idea of a perfect teacher in whom we can find surcease and release. Rationally, it's off-the-charts even if there are vast religions supporting it, but realistically, where the heart beats, it makes perfect sense.

Trying to find the perfect teacher may be as irrational as thinking you have actually found him/her, but where the longing arises, the heart opens up wide-wider-widest and it is this quality that makes the search for the perfect teacher a wise choice. Open up to what touches the heart ... what really touches the heart. Nurse and nurture that longing as a mother might nurse and nurture her child.

And how does the good mother act? Is she inattentive? Not at all. So bring an unswerving attention to bear on the honest yearnings -- however insane they may seem. Books don't answer. People don't answer. But an attentive mom?

Well, mom is god. Any kid knows that.
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"Zen and the Art of Seduction"

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Received the following in email today. The 1982 document is unpublished, but has joined the Aitken (Roshi) archive (a public record) in Hawaii.

"Zen and the Art of Seduction" by Robin Westen

It may be dusty, but it may also be pretty informative for anyone interested in Zen practice.
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writing

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During a radio interview yesterday, an author complained that these days everyone wants to be a writer, but nobody reads books. Bucking the trend to some extent, he pointed to a magazine on the west coast that only read submissions accompanied by a sales slip indicating that the would-be author had bought a book.

Everyone's got something to say. Everyone would like others to listen. Has it ever been any different? I don't think so. It's just that now the internet does not discriminate -- as publishing establishments once did -- between good writing and bad. There is no fickle finger of fate sending out pink slips that say, "your writing skills suck."

And where no one can yank your chain, the willingness to believe you have something interesting to say trickles weed-fashion across neighboring tracts. No critic says, "boring" or "derivative" or "repetitive" or just plain "stupid." The playing field has been leveled on the internet and with a level playing field, why should anyone be expected to read? Some people write better than others ... equality is not the point. How can anyone be expected to sift through every bit of mediocrity, however heart-felt or sincere? I sure as hell won't.

Reading may be a strong informer of writing, but you have to be devoted to writing before you find that out. And is there some cachet to writing? Less and less that I can see.
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repetition

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Having recently visited a doctor who grew pretty touchy when I asked him to go over a point yet again ("I've already explained that," he said more than once), it occurs to me that I too can overlook the need for repetition:

And so, for no particular reason, here are several things I think it's worth repeating:

The Cucumber Sage
The Invitation
Desiderata

As I say, this list is in no way exhaustive -- they were just things that came to mind when thinking about the inability or unwillingness of those in possession of good suggestions to be smug or distant just because they happen to have such information.
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Ben Franklin

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Some quotes from Ben Franklin:

-- He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

-- Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.

-- He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

-- All would live long, but none would be old.

-- Anger is never without Reason, but seldom with a good One.

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perfecting the slob

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Slick, four-color design magazines and upscale housing on television shows often depict something quite interesting. What they depict is nothing that is interesting, nothing that is loved: No books on the walls, no velveteen portraits of Elvis, no orange ceilings, no refrigerators with magnetized reminders.

The reason for leaving out such human traces, I imagine, is that the viewer will not be distracted from the architecture, the layout, or the placement of things. Certainly there can be a couch, but not a couch with a beautiful or ugly lap blanket lying carelessly over the back.

As in a Zen meditation hall, you can see better if there is less to see. You can introduce your own color or style without fear of contradiction. This, the magazine pictures seem to say, is an empty canvas on which you are welcome to paint.

Sometimes I wonder if people try to make their minds resemble the spare and dustless symmetries you can see in magazines or on TV ... a place in which the smell of an apple pie would never entice the nostrils.

On the one hand, the mind is as full of endless chatter as a teenager's room may have unwashed clothes on the floor. Who wouldn't want to clean up this mess? On the other hand, once cleaned to perfection ... well, how interesting can perfection actually be even if it were possible?

As a supreme court justice might know pornography ("I may not know what it is, but I know it when I see it"), so each person may recognize his or her own inner slob. But recognizing his or her own inner perfection may be more than honest person could achieve. Scrub the floors until they glisten, paint the walls, vacuum the rugs, fill up the bank account, get the right car or spouse, give away all your worldly goods, erect a hermit's hut in the forest ... at what point will someone say "enough!" and just hang up a beloved velveteen Elvis ... stop perfecting things according to someone else's thin-lipped dictates?

Slob living doesn't work very well.

Micrometric perfection doesn't work much better.

How about picking your velveteen Elvis and following it to the ends of the earth?
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100,000,000 affected

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Some 100 million people were said to have been affected as Twitter -- an electronic 'communications' device -- was temporarily shut off for maintenance today. Here's the story

100,000,000 is a lot of people.

When I ask my sons what it is they communicate with such devices, they grow evasive and inarticulate, making me imagine it's sex, drugs and whatever there is that stands for rock 'n' roll these days. But even if the communication is naughty somehow, what is it that makes these devices so addictive?

A safe distance? An anonymity that allows for honesty? A loneliness looking for an outlet? Business deals? Love? An electronic circle of friends ... which makes me wonder how the word 'friend' is intended these days?

I don't mind being left out of the loop -- I can barely work the cell phone I keep for auto emergencies and tracking down one child or the other -- but there must be some human threads running through these gotta-have-it devices.

Well, whatever the reasons, someone certainly is making a lot of money.
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obvious

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Discovering the obvious can seem too prosaic and yet, where the discovery appears, it can feel like quite a square dance -- full of bright music and smiles. The dime drops and there is some dial tone that gives a whole new meaning to our old-fashioned telephone.

It's pretty obvious, for example, that the mind is a grasping, greedy cuss, and yet when anyone slows down enough to really examine this obvious realm, it can be like a vast revelation. You can almost imagine a couple of buffed pamphleteers showing up unannounced on your door step, hawking the 'good word.' That's how stunning the discovery of the obvious can be.

Sure, it's d'oh that the mind skitters and skates and scoops up belief and hopes and possessions like some vast street sweeper. Obvious stuff. But for those who consent to look into the causes and results of such a mind ... well, whoa mama!

If a grasping mind is good for grasping and yet things are always in a state of flux and thus ungraspable, what the hell is anyone supposed to do with this wily cuss -- the one that can put spaghetti on the table and yet cause so many doubts? Some summon up brass bands of philosophy and religion. Some reflect back and try to make some sense of things. Whatever the course, it is clear that what is obvious has even more scope than initially imagined.

Oh well, I guess I was just thinking about the rarity of people consenting to reflect in a way that will bring them home. Everyone reflects, but the seriousness with which they reflect varies and more often than not just leads back to an elevation of the wily cuss who started the reflection in the first place. Still, if you bang your head against the wall often enough, the dime may drop -- do'h! -- into your lap.

What's the matter with a cup of coffee? What's the matter with some eggs? What's the matter with some hash-browned potatoes? Sure, it's obvious ... but is it obvious?
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interesting and important

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Sometimes I think that things are far too interesting to be important. Mostly, the importance is granted a lead position and what is interesting goes begging. But where importance glistens, what is interesting flows.

I guess this is just one of those post-its you can stick up on your mind's refrigerator door. A nudge. And perhaps important for a while. But after 'a while,' things get interesting and there is no denying it.

What brought this to mind was reading some words about 'Beat Buddhism' or some such moniker. I took it to mean the Buddhism found in works by people like Alan Watts and others of his time. I was always a fan -- found importance in -- the old guys of Buddhism and more specifically Zen. Their words nudged me much as Alan Watts' words nudge others.

But I don't think it's so important how anyone hitches up a star. What matters is that they pick their star and then ... for once ... stop screwing around: Dig in, dig deep and find the place where things become interesting and untenable. It really doesn't matter whether someone can spell or discourse on the nirmanakaya. Such things are like posters in an auto garage -- ads for the best spark plugs or brake pads or hub caps. Very important! Yes, very important if you want the car to run.

And then one day -- it might be a Tuesday or a Wednesday -- you wake up to the fact that what is important and what has held your hand through thick and thin ... is much more interesting than its importance. It may be a bit disconcerting at first because finding important topics is our way of asserting our own importance. But a little at a time, with practice, what is interesting takes the reins and giggles and doesn't ask for anything.

Maybe this is to vague, too airy-fairy, too scrambled. But it's what I can manage this morning.

Oh well.
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fragments

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Everything seems to be a fragment of something else, a-part-of and yet complete. For example, I may have read a book and yet remember only some small phrase ... and it is enough to complete the meaning or universe of that book for me.

Or maybe it's a half-erased graffito on a men's room wall: All it says is "or else" or "cotton balls" and what preceded or followed what is legible is now missing or smudged.

Usually, it is detail heaped on detail that makes a convincing story or thought. But after a while, fragments are enough ... the picture will paint itself if I quit picking up paint brushes.

And the fragments are fun, evocative, or confounding -- and often-times far more interesting than the larger context in which they might fit.

Think of it: Square bubbles; loving scars; or maybe just petite peas.

Fragments of smell, fragments of sight, fragments of hearing, fragments of taste, fragments of emotion, fragments of thought ... and somehow it's enough: The symphony's fragment notes become the symphony, which once again is a fragment.
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daring

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Reading a dissection of age-group interest and affiliation with religious life this morning, I wondered to what extent conformity trumped daring. And more, how would anyone go about rating their own daring?

For example, I can put up a pretty good argument that Zen Buddhists -- or at least the ones who sit down on a cushion and shut up -- are pretty damned ballsy. And yet I hardly think of myself that way. And no one thinks they are especially daring when actually practicing zazen or seated meditation.

Daring seems to be rated either before or after the event ... but not during it. This is the reason so many politicians and priests sound ridiculous when praising the "heroism" of another. At a distance, something may be heroic ... but not when you ask the hero. The hero has been there and done that and knows that s/he never gave heroism a thought at the time.

It seems we can perceive a lack of daring in our own or others' actions, but I think it is harder to see our own very real daring. Does it matter? I don't know.

Just thinking -- a bit fuzzy-headed -- out loud.
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food

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Don't mess with me just now. In preparation for an exploratory exam at the hospital today, I have been warned off food, drink and, well, just don't put anything in my mouth. It makes me crabby and, with wife and kids in Philadelphia for a tourist visit, there are fewer diversions, fewer things that would draw my attention away from the facts, fewer points of forgetful solace.

It's not just that I am mildly hungry. What really gets under my skin is that this smooth-sailing habit has been short-circuited. A habit like that isn't easy to break or to want to break. I guess it's about like any other habit -- I want what I want and like what I like -- but just now "food" is under the microscope.

Why must Zen students think that their daily life is somehow not Zen ... that's it's ordinary where Zen practice is (go ahead a whisper it!) extraordinary? That's a rhetorical question, but it is interesting.

Anyway, I have a couple of activities to fill the space between now an 1130a arrival at the hospital where they will look at my liver, spleen and possibly pancreas. I'll shower and do a little zazen ... and gripe. Time flies when you're having fun. :)
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breath-counting

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In Zen practice, there is breath-counting...counting the exhalations from one to ten and beginning again.

What could be simpler? What could be more personal? What could be more accurate?

Beginners find themselves stymied again and again. They don't yet know that experts are in precisely the same boat. In breath-counting, experts and tyros collapse in the same heap.

Breath-counting. I don't praise it to the exclusion of anything else, but for those with the determination and courage, what could be better? What could be more direct?

Let others talk and believe and hope and dissect.
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wake up!

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In the early-dawn light, even before the roosters, the mourning doves were calling and responding, calling and responding today.

I wonder if the birds have an informal roster of who will be first to herald each day.
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request for contributions

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Received in email this request which I have also posted under "Eido Tai Shimano." Together with Robert Aitken Roshi, Kobutsu has done a lot of the heavy-lifting when it comes to gathering and making available pertinent data as regards Mr. Shimano.

Greetings Dear Friends and Supporters,
The Engaged Zen Foundation needs your donation in order to continue its work!

Thanks to your continued support, EZF has been surviving on the donations of a very small number of individuals and frequent infusion of personal funds. . Just recently EZF was part of two SCOTUS cases as amici curiae. In Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005) Elimination of juvenile death penalty and In Graham v. Florida (08-7412) and Sullivan v. Florida (08-7621) (2009) Juvenile Life Sentences. Since much of the work of EZF now focuses on correspondence practice and providing Buddhist written materials to prisoners, EZF has strived to survive on a shoestring budget.

Only a few weeks ago, Robert Aitken Roshi, now 93 years young, invited Ven. Kobutsu to visit with him at the Honolulu Diamond Sangha for one week. This will be a very important and valuable pilgrimage for Kobutsu as well as Robert Aitken Roshi and the future of American Zen Buddhism.

EZF needs your donations to make this pilgrimage possible. We are calling upon you, our friends and supporters, to assist us in raising the necessary funds --approximately $1,200.00 -- to send Ven. Kobutsu on this important journey.

Your tax deductible donations in the amount of $25, $50, $100, $500, or any other amount, can be made to EZF via credit card or PayPal by clicking here:


For those without HTML email, donations can be made from the EZF site at:

http://www.engaged-zen.org/contact.html

Alternately, donations may be made by check to:

The Engaged Zen Foundation
Post Office Box 213
Sedgwick, ME 04676 USA

In dynamic peace, with nine deep bows,
Ryushin Sean Malone, Vice president – The Engaged Zen Foundation

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one liar to another

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An email this morning made me think:

Usually, we mewl and pine for the "truth" and set up barriers against the "lies." But for anyone who is serious about spiritual endeavor, the "truth" is an obstruction: The important part is to get to the bottom of the lies.

As the old saying goes, "If someone tells you 'it's free,' grab your wallet!"

Ditto the "truth."

This is just one old liar talking to another.
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Socrates on writing

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In the May 13 issue of The Economist, there was an article about Barack Obama's criticism of up-to-date gadgets and the effect they have on society.

More than Obama's somewhat bizarre criticism (he was swept into office partly due to an impressive use of the internet) was a background paragraph and Socrates' part in it:

Socrates’s bugbear was the spread of the biggest-ever innovation in communications—writing. He feared that relying on written texts, rather than the oral tradition, would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls…they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.” Enos Hitchcock voiced a widespread concern about the latest publishing fad in 1790. “The free access which many young people have to romances, novels and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth.” (There was a related worry that sofas, introduced at the same time, encouraged young people to drift off into fantasy worlds.) Cinema was denounced as “an evil pure and simple” in 1910; comic books were said to lead children into delinquency in 1954; rock’n’roll was accused of turning the young into “devil worshippers” in 1956; Hillary Clinton attacked video games for “stealing the innocence of our children” in 2005.

The emphasis above is mine:

"... They will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves." To my mind, it is a far-reaching comment.

Far-reaching, but still not far-reaching enough because, I imagine, the oral tradition to which Socrates alluded was every bit as open to a cotton-candy lifestyle as was a world full of written words: If you can remember and recite the words, then you know what you are talking about, right? How many of us know people like that ... including the one in the mirror? :)

Still, I thought it was fun to think how from age to age, the changes keep coming, keep upsetting someone's apple cart, and keep morphing into ... whatever it is they morph into.
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getting down to business

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Today, while reading a bulletin board on the BBC, I ran into a word that sent me to the dictionary. That was kind of fun. "Deontology" -- the the theory or study of moral obligation ... and not, as I had flash-guessed half-humorously, some advanced and more expensive version of dentistry.

When I was a teenager, my father would occasionally challenge me to spell long words I had never heard of. "Phthisis" comes to mind. They weren't words anyone was likely to use, but it had a kind of stratospheric feel to it ... fancy words in your own language that no one was ever likely to hear again. It had a superior feel to it.

The theory or study of moral obligation ....

Of what use are theory and study? Well, besides showing off unnecessarily, the only use I can think of is to put theory and study to the test. There's probably a long word for that too, but doesn't it all boil down to ...

Put up or shut up?

I don't intend the question in some dismissive, don't-be-an-academic-asshole sense. I mean it literally. Who doesn't have theories and studies running around in the mind? So ... doesn't there come a time when there needs to be a willingness to dive in, to make mistakes, and to find out if something is true or not? Can long-longer-longest words burnish that experience?
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sneaking up on god

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Did you ever catch yourself trying to sneak up on your chosen god or realization or whatever? Somewhere, whispering in the mind, is the thought that if you are just good enough, virtuous enough, kind enough, intellectual enough, emotional enough ... if you could recite enough text or build enough temples or expend enough energy ... THEN you would find the prize in hand and all would be well.

Sneaking up on god.

The picture that comes to my mind is of a curled-up, well-fed cat, its eyes half open as it watches the end of its tail and concocts sure-fire strategies for nailing that twitching, seemingly-independent sucker.


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unremembered present

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Strange thing, memory: It informs and infuses the present and yet is invariably inaccurate. Events and people that were stunningly bright or horrific in their moment are now veiled and blurred by judgment and affection.

"I remember it as if it were yesterday!" I suppose it's true -- those etched arrows or warming shawls -- but yesterday, while inescapable, is gone ... revised, remolded and never really the same. Does anyone say, "I remember as if it were today?"

I think it is in The Dhammapada that it says,

We are what we think
Having become what we thought.

Living in the past is often held up as a fool's errand, but what about all the nitwits running around saying we have to live in the present ... in what way are they any less foolish, any less bamboozled, any less lazy?

For me, this is a serious question -- one for serious men and women who don't lack courage. But it might well be just another philosophical bauble, something to bandy about in a term paper or over a pitcher of beer. Beer is nothing to sneer at: At least you get a hangover for your trouble.

My teacher once mentioned a "pointless point."

The stingy bastard didn't even pass the beer.
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religious corpses

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Now and then, I have to remind myself: It is not what people think that matters so much when it comes to important matters -- it is what they believe. In a number of ways, this is pretty scary, but that doesn't change my belief that it is true. All the rational gimcrack in the world doesn't stand a chance when belief is brought to bear.

As a criticism of others, this may be fun, but as an observation about ourselves -- an observation accompanied by investigation -- it becomes useful.

As a newspaper reporter, I once got involved in writing a series of articles about a proposed new school. The school was needed, according to some, and too expensive according to others.

One day, I sat down and created two terse outlines of each position. The boxes ran side-by-side in the paper. No opinions -- just facts. I was pretty smug ... if you put the facts in front of people, they will choose something sensible. I imagined, with my two-box approach, that I had written my last new-school article for a while.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. The superintendent of schools called to say he thought my idea and execution were good, but otherwise ... it was the same ol' same ol'. Same debate based on the same arguments, most of them top-heavy with belief and bias.

Isn't it sometimes the same in spiritual endeavor -- that adherents seek to save the drowning child and grab the child by the throat in an effort to place him or her on dry land? But by the time the child is placed on the land, s/he is dead from strangulation. Instead of a living, breathing, joyful person, what is left after so much effort, is just another religious corpse.

The shape and form of spiritual endeavor really are useful, but somehow it needs to be remembered that killing the spirit with form is not the same as salvation. Dead bodies with well-manicured fingernails sounds pretty stupid to me. I guess the only hope is that determination and courage and patience will show the way to something more lively than a corpse of belief.
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no insult

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Television is going the way of books -- going, going, gone. There are now so many ads on TV that it is hard to find the show itself. And the slices of story that are offered ...?

Sitting on the porch on this moisty afternoon, I could see rain drops plopping circle-perfect into awaiting puddles. I watched for at least a half an hour, ad-free.

Rain drops do not insult the intelligence.
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a little sweat

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Strange to think that when Cyrus McCormick completed work on the reaper/combine that would form a basis for the International Harvester Company, it was with the help of a slave, Jo Anderson -- a man who, according to his station, might have done the work that the combine did so much more efficiently -- picking crops in the early part of the 19th century.

At its inception, the reaper/combine was seen as a boon to feeding a hungry and growing nation. Its efficiency in gathering wheat among other crops meant that fewer workers needed to be employed and it sent those workers to seek employment in cities. Ergo, perhaps, the rabbit-warren cubicles of office life.

And yet as I watched a TV show about harvesting on TV last night, there was something saddening about the occasional pictures of men an women trimming lettuce, gathering oranges, away from the cotton fields, and having far less contact with the sugar beets that produce 50% of the sugar in this country.

The show even touched on the tension that existed between those who worked and the machines that replaced them. On the one hand efficiency. On the other, loss of gainful employment.

But more than a paycheck, it seemed to me, there was a loss of dignity as mechanical improvements took hold. There is something to be said for the dirt beneath our feet and fingernails, the sweat that soaks our shirts, and the relaxing sigh that comes unbidden when day is done and the sun goes down. I don't want to make a Walden-esque fetish out of it (let's all sit around preening in our simplicities), but there is some satisfaction in perspiration -- a satisfaction that underarm deodorant can never provide. I think it is good, whatever the chosen profession, to know how to sweat.

But that could just be the old fogy in me.

PS. Forgot to add that the TV program also gave some possible explanations (between the lines) for why it is that store-bought tomatoes suck. After the combine was developed, someone made life easier by creating a tomato with a thicker skin -- something that would withstand the bruising the combine might otherwise deliver. Great for productivity and shelf-life, but if you're anything like me, there is nothing like a real tomato... the kind that invariably dribbles down your chin.
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background-foreground

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The only two places where I can think of where pipe organ is a 'perfect fit' or imperative presence are in church and at a baseball game.

There are probably a bunch of others as well, but those two stood out in my mind.

I wonder if there are other settings in which musical instruments are thought of as part of the background or if there are musical instruments for which particular settings come forcefully to mind.

Just noodling.
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stuck with the past

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A friend sent along a copy of a New York Times article addressing the fact that the past is here to stay -- most notably on youtube and Facebook where people say and show things about themselves that they learn to regret. There is no way to delete such past enjoyments or braggadocio ... you're stuck with the farm and employers, among others, are capable of holding it against you.

A salient quote:

The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.

So the longing -- I would call it a human longing -- to find some place in which to be naked and unfettered (even if it's only long-distance) butts up against the fact that the nakedness is selective and in some cases embarrassing: It's not the whole story and thus the 'ability to control our identities' is thrown into a cocked hat.

There is no forgiveness on the Internet, no recognition that people are honestly more interesting than their well-concocted resumes. So, if I tell you an embarrassing story about myself, you may judge that according to other things you know. But on the Internet there are few if any 'other things.'

The past is inescapable. But it is also ungraspable in any realistic sense. The past is who you were and who you are ... simultaneously. Blush or wail or congratulate yourself all you like, there is no escape.

What then is left? Intellectual or psychological analysis? Selective memory? Convenient brain farts? How can anyone control their identity when push comes to shove? And yet who doesn't try -- sometimes pretty hard -- to control that identity?

Limiting the limitless ... it's an exercise worth investigating. What nitwit thought that up?
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