Sunday Morning

Yes regret can keep you stuck in the past. It can also be prospective. I will never be a young father for example, something I'm reminded of when I see young dads with their children. But you're right, whether it's about the past or the future regret gets me out of focus and stuck someplace other than where I am now. It's another form of wishing, escaping.

I'm glad and surprised to learn W helped you through your grieving. I first heard about him from one of his patients. She is the sister of Amy #1. It was around the time I was living in Bandera and when I was seeing you. My friendship with her is a story for another day. I just wanted to acknowledge our longstanding connections. It's quite something.

The idea of going to the Zen Center stems from a lot of different things - an interest is Eastern culture, past experience with meditation and the need to quiet my troubled mind. I thought about yoga first but that is too connected to memories of Lesley to be appealing right now. Coincidentally the Center is quite near my house. I'm planning on walking there for the sessions. Also coincidentally the first book in the list of suggested reading posted on the Center's website is "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki. I've had a copy since 1978. I know because I kept the receipt for the book tucked inside its' pages. 32 years later I'm finally getting around to reading it carefully. It speaks to me and my situation quite directly.

Perhaps this time is a respite to catch up on my grief backlog. Hopefully nothing will add to it. I recognize I'm not supposed to be in a relationship right now. Perhaps my biggest mistake with Lesley was not honoring this credo. I thought wrongly the marriage was over and I was ready to move on. I wasn't. Knowing this is one thing, sticking to it quite another. The longing is always there. And there are many ways of giving in

Letter to Mary the Red

This is a better morning for some reason. I'm still too much in my head and lonely. But my mood is better. I'm finally getting started on fixing the roof today. I'm thinking less about what's going to happen with Lesley. I have a lot going for me which will just slip away if I don't get myself back on track. I'm feeling more hopeful that everything will be ok. I'll get the house fixed, make some progress at work, start doing more with myself than just sit around.

Last night you mentioned something about the internal conversation one has with oneself, how the repeated wish for death is a hallmark of depression. These "ideations" trouble me even though they're not seriously entertained. I've had them more often over the past couple of days. This morning I remembered this was not something new, how I slipped into this kind of thinking in the past, going back to my freshman year in college. It has been with me a long time.

Last night as I was driving home I thought about how my suffering was really tied up in this self I was holding onto. I was reminded of my favorite part of the film "I'm Your Man" about the musician Leonard Cohen who spent five years as a Zen monk. Cohen said of his teacher, Roshi “became a part of my life and a deep friend in the real sense of friendship: someone who really cared about – or didn't care, I'm not quite sure which it is – who deeply didn't care about who I was. Therefore who I was began to wither, and the less I was of who I was, the better I felt."

The less I was of who I was, the better I felt... That makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe I've found my path forward.

The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978 by Sarah Greenough

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
A nice history of film photography. The text frequently referred to photographs on some other page. Would have been better to organize things so the reader doesn't have to flip back and forth through the book while reading it. After a while I just read the words and looked at the pictures later. More bettah.

I didn't know the word "snapshot" originally referred to a hunter getting off a quick shot at his quarry before it scurried away. I have sometimes felt like a gunman carrying my camera in a bag. Once I was hassled by people at a club thinking I might actually have a gun.

I like the "no rules" message of this book. When taking pictures, it's all good. Random misfires always teach you something, about the camera, the setting or yourself. But when snapshots work they have a beauty all their own, like John Cage's chance operations.


View all my reviews.

Praise for Greg McKendry

Another hate crime over the weekend, this one in Knoxville. An unemployed man who hates liberals opened fire with a shotgun during a children's play at a Universalist Church. I won't write his name here. He doesn't deserve recognition. Instead I hope the whole world hears the name Greg McKendry over the next few days.

A burly usher who died was hailed as a hero for shielding others from gunfire at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church...

Church members praised Greg McKendry, 60, saying he attempted to block the gunfire. Barbara Kemper said that McKendry, who died, "stood in the front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us."

Kemper said the gunman shouted before he opened fire, though police said others didn't recall him saying anything.

"It was hateful words. He was saying hateful things," she said, refusing to elaborate.

"Greg McKendry was a very large gentleman, one of those people you might describe as a refrigerator with a head," said church member Schera Chadwick. "He looked like a football player. He did obviously stand up and put himself in between the shooter and the congregation."

Update: Two of my friends, Beauvais and his wife Diane, were in the church just a few feet away from the shooting. They weren't hit by any gunfire but are dealing with the awful shock of being there. More over at The Tin Foil Hat...

Welcome to my MicroBlog

I recently opened an account over here at Twitter. It's a "microblog" which for the uninformed is a blog made up of text message updates no longer than 140 characters. Twitter was founded July 2006 so its ancient by internet standards. Last year it won the Web Award in the blog category at the South by Southwest Conference. So how cool is it? Well, don't ask me. I'm a hopeless nerd.

My Love Still Shines Bright...

This blog's name is borrowed from the Bard. It's about the power of “the love that moves the Sun and other stars.” I'm not a great writer or thinker. But I believe in the power of love.


SONNET 65
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

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