And kale for good measure.
Corn silk tea recommended and provided by Salima; modeled / investigated by aneeta.
Author: kloncke
The Buddha On Flowers
Death sweeps away
The person obsessed
With gathering flowers,
As a great flood sweeps away a sleeping village.
The person obsessed
With gathering flowers,
Insatiable sense pleasures,
Is under the sway of Death.
As a bee gathers nectar
And moves on without harming
The flower, its color, or its fragrance,
Just so should a sage walk through a village.
—The Dhammapada, translation by Gil Fronsdale
Flowers, mom and dad at a dog park in Napa.
Obsession with sense pleasures be darned, getting outdoors today was such a relief.
New Friend Music
Music newly recommended by a friend;
Music that feels like a new friend.
Birthday Cake from the Comrades
I won’t talk about my birthday, but I will talk about James Baldwin. Or, really, listen to him.
It is a pity that [Eldridge Cleaver and I] won’t, probably, ever have the time to attempt to define once more the relationship of the odd and disreputable artist to the odd and disreputable revolutionary; for the revolutionary, however odd, is rarely disreputable in the same way that the artist can be. These two seem doomed to stand forever at an odd and rather uncomfortable angle to each other, and they both stand at a sharp and not always comfortable angle to the people they both, in their different fashions, hope to serve. But I think it is just as well to remember that the people are one mystery and that the person is another. Though I know what a very bitter and delicate and dangerous conundrum this is, it seems to me that a failure to respect the person so dangerously limits one’s perception of the people that one risks betraying them and oneself, either by sinking to the apathy of cynical disappointment, or rising to the rage of knowing, better than the people do, what the people want.
Because it’s my birthday week and I do what I want, I’d like to argue for a broad definition of “artist” that includes those of us interested in wisdom. (Baldwin, as an artist, certainly was.) Which helps explain, maybe, some of the awkwardness and contradictions in the Buddhist-Marxist combo. One operates at the level of the person (or the non-self, existence, but framed in an individualistic fashion that was revolutionary at the time of the Buddha’s teaching), while the other concerns itself with the people.
Perhaps a similar tension also underlies the queasy slipperiness of identity politics — or identity, period. “Identity” (gender, race, ability, sexuality, etc.) is at once intensely personal, emotional, and subjective (our stories), and simultaneously collective, socially and historically determined (our position). I’ve written about this paradox before; maybe an unsurprising fixation for a mixed girl. ;)
My bad, friends: this was supposed to be a birthday post! I lead an extremely fortunate life amidst a blessed contagion of creativity and caring from those around me. No idea how we’re going to reconcile the person and the people, but I’m lucky to find myself in community that wants to try.
Thanks to everyone for the bornday love. And deliciousness!
Bodhidharma Breakups
I heard a Buddhist sermon once, a dharma talk, in which the teacher described the night he came to know sleepiness.
He was at a residential meditation retreat, and though the students had been released back to their dormitories for the night, he decided to stay in the main hall, sitting.
This was no lark because, as you know, at meditation retreat centers they do not mess around when it comes to mornings. 4am, your ass is up. No caffeine, either, or hardly none. Accordingly, come 9 or 10pm, you are tired. Eleven, sleep-heavy chin sinks to your chest, bounces back up like a car on hydraulics. And this is Theravada tradition, eyes closed. By midnight even the insomniac practitioners are bobble-headed with drowsiness.
But this teacher, on this night, was fighting the nods, battling the bobble-head, determined not to succumb to sleepiness, but rather to observe it. To remain awake, taking note of experience.
Finally, dizzy with darkness but stubborn and still curious, he decided to open his eyes. Not just open, but saucer and bulge them, two peeled grapes in his sockets, letting the light steep them and the cold air gently bite.
Like this, he stayed awake, sitting.
Ten minutes.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
Forty.
Until eventually he felt the first wave. An enormous wave, engulfing him from the bottom up, his folded legs, his butt, hips, flowing warm and heavy and sweet up his torso, shivering his shoulders and face, and wicking up and off the crown of his head, into the air above him.
He withstood it, but minutes later, another wave came. Again he fought, saucered his eyes wider, prying the lids open with his fingers. Again it traveled up his body and through the crown of his head.
A first wave; a second; a third.
And then it stopped. He was awake. Three waves, that was it. Over. For another couple hours, he stayed and sat peacefully, gently electrified, without effort. From then on, he recognized sleepiness in a totally new way.
Bride To Be
Prep for tomorrow’s ceremony:
1. Bouquet
2. Signs (Inspiration)
3. Oil (Paint)
4. Say Yes To The Dress
5. Vows
6. Bag Lunch
7. Who’s risking arrest?
8. Carpool
9. Walking shoes
10. Creative actions give me life.
To Be Truly Radical
To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.
—Raymond Williams
I like to think that many others have expressed this same sentiment in places I’ll never see, in times before mine, in languages I can’t read or understand.
Today’s Gratitude
From other angles, or at other times of day, this wall is a dull, gray green.
This is a feeling I’ve had all day long — like I chanced upon my own life at the right moment, from a dumb-luck trajectory.
A Tale of Two Drug Dealers
When I went last night with a friend to see the award-winning film Fruitvale Station, depicting the final day’s events of police murder victim Oscar Grant, I naturally expected to get angry about racism. And I did get angry — though, owing to the film’s complex, relatable approach, deftly shifting between heartbreak, horror, and humor, I felt many other things, too. (You should really see it, if you get a chance.)
But one of the most striking reminders of U.S. white supremacy glared across the screen even before Fruitvale’s opening credits.
Meet the Millers is, according to the trailer, a zany comedy about a white dude sent on a mission to Mexico to smuggle in a ridiculous amount of weed. Knowing he’ll be more conspicuous at the border if he’s alone, he assembles a team of white working-class ne’er-do-wells to act as his hetero nuclear clan, faking wholesomeness (synonymous with whiteness) to deflect any law-enforcement suspicion.
This, just before a film whose main character, a Black man, struggles to stay out of prison, wrestling with whether or not to keep selling trees to pay rent for his family.
And whose racist criminalization makes his last encounter with the law anything but a joke.
Black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates, according to new federal data.
Telling [people of color] they’re obsessed with racism is like telling a drowning person they’re obsessed with swimming.
—Hari Kondabolu
Jerk of All Trades
Work.
School. (Masters.)
Political Organizing.
Being a Tidy, Responsible, Sociable Human.
Fun.
Spiritual Study.
Can I be real for a minute? There is just no way. AND YET NONE OF THEM CAN BE DROPPED.
Well, at least school’s about to be over. But you’ll also notice some areas I haven’t listed (let alone included in the chart — can you even make a real Venn diagram with more than three or four categories?).
Romance? Nope.
Babies? Sorry.
Family? Barely.
Death and/or Major Disasters? Oh I’m sure they’ll come, but knock-on-wood not yet.
Do you see what I’m getting at? How is somebody supposed to be a well-rounded, compassionate, stable, vibrant, rhapsodic jewel in the Indra’s Net of the universe, and ALSO ACTUALLY GET GOOD AT SOME THINGS THAT MATTER? There are too many things that matter.
And speaking of which, I lied: there is romance. But who has time to give it the care and attention it deserves? While also, you, know, exercising and reading fiction sometimes? And watching Krissy Chula youtube videos?
I’m not saying it’s impossible to do many important things at once. (see: Immigrant Hustle. Even the 2nd Gen in my family gets super serious.) Plenty of people manage much more than I have to, with even fewer resources. I’m lucky.
But goodness, can I just find a team and specialize as one of its Power Rangers? Hone my green or blue or pink abilities, whatever it is Power Rangers do, and feel effective and helpful in the world?
And here’s the other problem: contentment. Not that contentment is a problem — in my experience, it’s wonderful. But it also comes at a cost. Because in the periods when I’ve experienced deep contentment, I’ve simplified. I’ve covered just two or three basic areas, and that’s it. Working at a bookstore, cooking my meals, and writing letters to friends. Great. Living and working at a meditation center, trying to pick up kitchen Spanish. Fantastic.
But eventually (and I suppose if it were Total Contentment this wouldn’t occur), eventually: something feels missing.
At the bookstore, wisdom.
At the meditation center, politics.
In politics, love.
In love, friends. Or work.
In work, deep meaning and purpose.
Maybe this stage is like the first planting: all the seeds close together, until you see which ones sprout strongest, and remove the others. (Isn’t that what they do? I probably shouldn’t attempt too many farming metaphors. See? Half-knowledge.)
I’m guessing within the next couple years, or maybe months, some of these seedlings will be plucked out — whether I like it or not.
Kloncke 