Carmel Point – Robinson Jeffers Tor House
Carmel Point BY ROBINSON JEFFERS The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses— How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop …
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One-Straw Reveloution – M. Fukuoka – Zen
A Village Without War and Peace A snake seizes a frog in its mouth and slips away into the grass. A girl screams. A brave lad bares his feelings of loathing and flings a rock at the snake. The others laugh. I turn to the boy who threw the stone: “What do you think that’s …
Obama’s Way – October 2012
“There are some things about being president that I still have difficulty doing,” he said. “For example, faking emotion. Because I feel it is an insult to the people I’m dealing with. For me to feign outrage, for example, feels to me like I’m not taking the American people seriously. I’m absolutely positive that I’m …
Just Want to See The Magic
Inmost Request – Suzuki Roshi
Suzuki Roshi San Francisco Zen Center July 15 1965 Originally offered: July 15th, 1965 | Modified October 27th, 2009 by korin July 15, 1965 Rev. S. Suzuki’s talk on Great Prajna Paramita Sutra This morning I want to explain the attainment…the attainment here…it means to resume to our true nature is actually attainments. To attain …
Scientists Adopt Tiny Island as a Warming Bellwether
Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times Cathy Pfister is part of a team of scientists conducting research on Tatoosh Island, Wash. By STACEY SOLIE Published: October 6, 2012 Scientists Adopt Tiny Island as a Warming Bellwether By STACEY SOLIE TATOOSH ISLAND, Wash. — From a stretch of rocky shoreline on this tiny island, one …
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A Day Looking – Northern Whidbey Island
Chief Seattle’s 1854 Speech
AUTHENTIC TEXT OF CHIEF SEATTLE'S TREATY ORATION "CHIEF SEATTLE'S 1854 ORATION" - ver . 1 Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like …
On the Order of Winter – A Ferry Passage
Winter's approach is revealed in the nuances of the creatures that will gain its full presence. There is the hint of hiddeness yet our senses see.
Using Our Eyes To See
A Music Video
Interspecies Bonding – Out On Greenlake
The Fog Moved In This Morning
We have had nearly sixty days of dry conditons, so the fog this morning was welcome.
THEREFORE, YE SOFT PIPES, PLAY ON – ECHOVAR
I have reproduced the following blog post from the ECHOVAR blog site and have given the direct link below. It is an outstanding piece on Steve Jobs. It so happens that I am one third through the book Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson. I have followed Jobs for thirty years and believe that he was …
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Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Passion For Looking, Not Thinking
The following article shows the west meeting the east, particularly Jung and Frued meeting zen. Although the article does not mention Jung and especially Hillman they both demonstrated thoughout their writings that the image was dominant in our minds when it came to thinking, before the word. It is interesting that the internet is following …
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Poem – Living Beings – Near a Western Red Cedar
we are the same as those who came before. yet our distance from our kind is great. do we not see that we the living, all of the living, are a clan? each with natures unique but living and this simple fact: our being. existence is a bond so great in this vast universe of …
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San Juan Islands in Winter
This is a series of photographs taken in the winter of 2012. The San Juan Islands rest between Seattle and Vancouver, BC in the Salish Sea. The Salish Sea is part of a body of water that extends the inland sea of the Pacific from Olympia, Washington to Haines, Alaska.
James Hillman – Dream’s Language
Dreams follow their own logic. And the use of logic is a poor choice of words. Is there a beginning, middle and end? Or does our waking mind force the linear script onto the contents? Dreams often do not recognize time and therefore a linear story line is not the point. What is the point? …
Gabrialle Bakker – East & West
Gabrialle Bakker is a Seattle artist who this year was awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant ( http://www.pkf.org ). Her work often shows the confluence of the euro and the orient. This cultural struggle is at the heart of the west, from Vancouver, BC to San Diego. Many of the western artists, writers and thinkers have …
Walt Whitman’s Advice to Poets
From the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass: “Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat …
MIYA ANDO – Zen & Art
The following link is to an interview which allows for a short discussion of nondualism applied to art and painting. http://www.nondualitymagazine.org/nonduality_magazine.1.miyaando.interview.htm#
Richard Avedon
"You can't get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. The surface is all you've got. You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surfce. All you can do is to manipulate the surface—gesture, costume, expression—radically and correctly. And I think Schiele understood …
Dongshan’s Five Ranks: A Zen Teaching on Nonduality
Northwest Sea Wave
Northwest-style breakers - rugged, choppy, lacking the elegant form of their brothers in the south. But they are orderly, waiting their turn in rows to slam the beach, expressing their power and force. One after another, after another. Defining rhythm, expressing the forces of depth and wind and rise.
Future Self
This short film is the most creative composition that I have seen that plays with the technology of light and the human form and shows our need to create and to experience life uniquely. It is like seeing the inside of our unconscious. <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/41699285">FUTURE SELF | Project Film</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/madeblog">MADE</a> on <a …
Two Paths
Expression follows two paths of existence — exterior and interior. Of course in reality they are one, they are the same. We are taught that they are different. Interior existence cannot be "seen" with our senses, nor can others see them. Abstraction and the unconscious make up much of this terrain. Photography captures the exterior …
Home Away From Home
Half Moon Bay, CA
America’s Literary Critic
Lincoln – Poetics, Character, Precipice of War and Human Design.
Lincoln - Poetics, Character, Precipice of War and Human Design. Upon reading Edmund Wilson's profile of Lincoln in "Patriotic Gore - Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War," I am taken by the literary and poetic drama of the account. Lincoln is shown to be chiefly literary in character — it is what …
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Rising and Falling at Once
Zen point offered a wonderful display last evening. Kathryn is tracking the seasons and found this convergence today - the sun setting and moon rising at the same time. It makes you think of possibilities. The third photo shows a visitor who was going to the sun. The final shot is back at home down …
Imogen Cunningham
Platonic Solids
Recent Photography Work – Triptyches
A Walk at Zen Point
Zen & Thomas Merton
I have been reading Thomas Merton in the last few weeks in his book, "Zen and the Birds of Appetite". It was written in the late 60s and his point of reference in learning is D.T. Suzuki, who was then the most popular translator of Zen to the western world. When I started the book …
A Walk Along the Saratoga Passage
Mid -August has brought summer to the island with long days and warm temperatures and plenty of sun. We have seen temperatures in the upper 70s and even low eighties. We live in the woods and now have much dappled sun most of the day. This beach is near home but is very remote used …
T.S. Elliot – Tradition & the Individual Talent
T.S. Eliot - Tradition & the Individual Talent T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Sacred Wood. 1921. Tradition and the Individual Talent I IN English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot refer to “the tradition” or to “a tradition”; at most, we employ the adjective in saying that the …
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Ebey Landing – Whidbey Island – Late July
Crete Spring: An Appreciation for James Hillman (1926 – 2011) by Louise Steinman
An excellent personal story about Hillman as a commemoration of his recent death.
The American – Henry James – A Critical Review
The American - Henry James This novel is one of James's early works. We are reminded that he was educated in both Europe and America by tutors and private schools and then attended Harvard Law School briefly. He was a member of the American James dynasty, along with his brother William James the preeminent psychologist, begun by his father, Henry James, Sr., a Swedenborgian lecturer and writer. Henry James, Sr. was made independently wealthy by his father who worked real estate deals in upstate New York and was involved in the development of the Erie Canal project. James was thirty-four when he wrote this novel and had been out of school for fifteen years. He lived in London at the time of its publication. He left America in 1875 to remain in Europe for the rest of his life. It is a story of an American who travels to France to expand his life apart from business and finds and loses the woman that he sought with much effort and romance. The book is a character study, one that James holds up as representative of sturdy American stock. Christopher Newman is a successful American business man in 1868, shortly after the end of the American Civil War. He conducts manufacturing and banking businesses in the United States ( at the time there are still several territories in the Rocky Mountain West) and presumably amasses his own wealth. He is in his mid-thirties when he departs for France. Newman's travels lead him to Paris and he meets the French woman that fulfills his idea of a suitable mate: cultured, intelligent and beautiful. Newman sets out, therefore, to acquire her through marriage as James makes the relationship feel like a business transaction, albeit a very personal one. Newman is the quintessential American - self-made, driven, polite, respectful and follows his own path. James shows in the closing pages that he is good too, not one to act out revenge such that the effects will destroy his opposer. We are shown how an American behaves in a social setting giving value to personal desires and circumstances, contrasted with the French bluebloods, who ultimately respect heritage above all else, even money. The novel's drama is developed in Newman's struggle and drive to woo Madame de Cintre and to overcome her domineering family. When he is very close to consummation, the plug is pulled and the family retracts its approval, sending Newman into a set of actions fraught with obstacles and French deceptions. The final obstacle is that Madame de Cintre elects to enter the monastic life to resolve the dual circumstances that her culture will not resolve: her desire to be Newman's wife and her desire to obey her mother. Along the way we are shown the formality of French old world nobility including a dramatic pistol dual between two men to resolve an insult that appears trivial in its nature. We are given the final impression that Newman is at peace with his personal resolutions to leave the family stew in its own juices only to be stirred to second thoughts by a friend who points out the notion that he has been beat at his own game and that is ultimately, very un-American in that the relationship is brought back into the realm of business and in business it is the deal that rocks. While the James's rigid stylistic control over language is dated, the story line and characters are well developed.
Nadav Kander
Neighborhood Beach
this is my second visit and I do not think I have seen a more wonderful beach.
Joan Didion – Blue Nights
Joan Didion is a writer I have enjoyed for many years. Her writing style is very direct and clear, and I think of Hemingway and Northern California's influence on her. I did not plan to read this book as I knew that it was focused on the death of her daughter and it is not …
June 30
Summer is slow in coming. The air is warmer but the temperature is staying in the sixties and the rain falls nearly every day. The grey skies of winter remain.