rain

Rain. Its delicious, seductive tap on my roof and my windows. Amend that. My? I rent a space in a former garage, barely joined to a house, a place becoming increasingly crowded physically and metaphysically. Not mine. (What is mine? Or yours? Or anybody's?) I must be leaving these premises. Hence, "my" apartment search. The baseboard heating now and again makes pounding sounds. I always liked the Beatles song saluting the rain. Your rain, my rain, the rain. Speaking of yesterday's topic of aimlessness, the rain (in Spain, or elsewhere) has no aim, does it, save downward, sometimes aslant, but ever downward, into the ground or into a drain or a river or a lake and a tiny bit back up again into the sky, so not so downward there, but content with no other aim but rainness.

aimlessness, the virtue

My Thich Nhat Hanh meditation book speaks of the virtue of aimlessness. It cites the Sanskrit word apranihita. For me is aimlessness a virtue or a rationalization? I do not mind, either way. It is fine. No direction home. No direction away. No lost. No found. No aim. No lack of aim. All fine.

Besides, what would I be aiming at or aiming for?

I am reminded of Eugen Herrigel writing in Zen in the Art of Archery that a master archer could miss the target every time and still be a master archer.

Don't you just love what my mentor Sam Paterson used to call my love for "socks inside out"?

homeward, words

back along Future86
and 17
the calculus of what is
was
and might be
in the dark
home
after sunset
before the sun
rises
again

FUTURE 86

I love that name, Future 86, emblazoned on signs along Route 17 in New York State, bestriding the hills, rivers, valleys, bare trees, and ribboning highway.

Future86.

Great band name.

Or title of a psychic fair that looks to the past and the future.

Future 86.

questions for a new year

Is it a year of the rat?
Or of the hat?
Maybe the sloth, the lemur, or axolotl?
When is the lunar new year?
How about the solar?
Or the plexus?
Where will I be a year from now, days after Epiphany?
Will I *be*?
Won't I *be* a "someone else" in any event, no matter what?
What epiphanies await me this year?
This day, this second?
And am I ready for them?
And does it matter, ready or not?

leaf it alone

As I watched Onondaga Creek swirl before me, after heavy rains, the waters muddy and leaf-laden, over by Plum Street, standing near those gorgeous, black industrial pedestrian bridges, I fixated on one greenish-yellow maple leaf, caught in the stream, carried along, floating, twirling. And I thought: why that leaf? What about the other leaves and twigs? And for how long do they pass before me?

November nuances

Several readers got nervous when they saw my post about the calendar turning to September, "nervous" not being entirely an accurate adjective, but suffice it to say that they were concerned, caring, considerate. They feared I might be on some sort of psychic shelf, a ledge, a place of morose departure. I assured them then that it was all about transition, turning the page, if not a chapter, or even a whole new book. So, since then, more days have tumbled by, more seconds ticked, and so on. If I say, I'm doing fine, will you doubt it, since men tend to assert that claim so readily despite the odds? Well, my doing fine is fine enough, embracing all of it: pain, change, renewal, reinvention, loss, gain, discovery, recovery, penury, luxury, song, silence. The leaves fall off the trees by the end of November, though at first many of those dappled delights cling on to the branch. But the bare branches have a stark beauty all their own. My friend the late Raymond Davidson, a New Yorker magazine artist, used to tell me he loved the simple line of those branches in preference to the picture-postcard leafy scenes. It's all all right. It's all there, all here.