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| Havana, Cuba street art |
When we appreciate every moment, the world is beautiful.
— Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
The air tastes like iron today as the body count goes up.
Which side is right? That's unclear.
You are levitating above a river while children call for help.
An ambulance painted with the face of Mother Teresa
screams toward the river bank.
The air tastes like iron and that is not a coincidence.
The sky doesn't seem quite true
and the streets are pocked from the explosions.
Survivors wear suits made from the pieces of animals
and the helicopter gunships take down anything that moves.
The air tastes like iron and you are praying or begging,
even you are not sure which.
There are no real answers and you know it.
You can hear invisible men marching,
they seem to be getting closer.
The air tastes like iron
and you don't know which side is right.
Friend, as long as there are sides, there is no right.
-- james lee jobe
The mind — What shall we call it?
It is the sound of the breeze,
That blows through the pines,
In the ink wash picture.
— Ikkyu
Life is impermanent.
I have been alive 23,619 days. That seems like a lot
until you consider that eventually I will be dead far longer.
The man we know as jobe will cease to exist, but in some ways I will go on.
My ashes will be scattered, some of me will return to the earth. Things will grow.
Some of my ashes will join the water table and be a part of that cycle.
Life will go from this water; rain, rivers, the oceans. Life needs water.
Things I have taught people will go on, and maybe even be passed along.
People I love will love others, and love will grow.
Eventually the sun will supernova, and I will go on as space dust, space gases.
You and I and every grain of sand are part of the universe.
Yes, life is impermanent. Creation, however, goes on.
-- james lee jobe
I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and a white dress
For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister
And told him we would love each other and take care of each other
Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere.
Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here
And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke.
I wish the kids had never come
And rent and coal and clothes to pay for
And a grocery man calling for cash,
Every day cash for beans and prunes.
I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish to God the kids had never come.
-- Carl Sandburg
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| Joan Miró |
brief journal update, sept 9, 2016
not the best of nights; a lot of peeing, odd dreams, moving about and sleeping in different rooms. in one dream my toes became bulbous, and in the dream i had a vision of them becoming puss-filled and infected, and eventually amputated. that was weird. the rest of the dream i kept looking to see if they were still alright. also i dreamed of these young single mothers, dozens of them, who all had to save their babies from rising floodwaters in old rotten frame houses in places like mississippi and alabama. that one became like a reality show on tv. in that dream i was just a spectator, i did nothing but pray. no one drowned. in yet another dream these older women kept wanting me to hold them. not in a sexual way, but as they grieved. i was quite young in the dream, and i stopped what i was doing and held them all for as long as they wished. around 2 am i read for a while, a book that rated youth hostels around the country, mahler was on the classical radio station. my father was born on this day in 1922.
-- james lee jobe
We’re all bound to the Buddha’s first noble truth. We all need each other. When we can become a sangha that learns to suffer together and not cause each other to suffer, beautiful things can unfold.
Mary Fuoco, “Facing Transphobia on the Path to Recovery”
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jlj
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