A Bold Undertaking

I have been reading Thomas Lynch and realizing that all writing is poetry—all writing of mine is, at least. Or it wants to be. Words want to sound right; they want to flow past one another. They want to find meaning in a clear unambiguous fashion, but they want to do it with flair, with an awareness of their own sounds and history. Each word wants to be properly placed in the matrix of history, meaning, and personal significance.

I want to write like Lynch. I want it so badly, I am romanticizing his profession. The man is a writer and poet by avocation, but an undertaker by trade. Casting the poet’s life as a worthy one is no great leap; making a funeral director’s existence sound worthy of envy is a greater accomplishment.

Lynch says that poetry is appreciated by many and avoided by most. But we should write it anyway. Be like him: write poetry for twenty years in order to develop in your bones a feel for language. After that long marinating in poetry, the prose you produce will be the sort that people want to read.

His insights into death are similarly practical and profound. Listen to the stillness of the body, says Lynch. Find the space where consciousness resides, and notice the quality of its departure. Contemplate what it means to be alive, to have a life, to be alive and relating to children and lovers and family and coworkers. Marvel that time will proceed apace in your absence, after your own personal world is snuffed out.

There are Zen stories that pivot on just such admonitions.

I could never write like Lynch. For one thing he is a better writer: more practiced, more disciplined, more experienced, more possessed of an entertaining personal history to use as fodder. More importantly, though, is the fact that we can only write as our selves. I cannot write like someone else. Suitably experienced, practiced, disciplined, suitably wise and rueful in retrospect, I would be a terrific teller of my own story, a masterful sharer of my own mind.

I could follow that advice: I could write poetry for twenty years. The wisdom and life experience and regrets will all take care of themselves. There is always something to write about. The challenge is finding the words to capture the truth.

what Zen is all about
Originally uploaded by sujathafan

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A Baby Babbles--Is Anything Said Or Not?

When he woke up from his nap today, the baby stayed on the bed and looked at his French book. Then he lay his head down on the picture of the playroom ("La Salle de Jeu") and said very clearly:

Aihavows

I tried to ask him about this, but he wasn't responding.

All day this has stayed with me, less for what it means about him than for what it means about me, hearing it as I did.



What are my vows for this life? And with what resolutions does a tiny person enter, and re-enter, this realm?

World Aflower

We are in the full swing of spring, not the painful first bursting that gives me annual pains in the head and heart, but the real open, easy flow of clear air, clear skies, and clear-mindedness. This time, right now, holds the fragrance of life in full bloom. Green plants are fresh, earnest, and lush. The world has awkened, stretched, and is under way.

This is the season of magnolias, magnolias of so many moods. There are the lacy fingers of Wada’s Gift, and the giant loud blossoms tiny trees in Washington Park that are dwarfed by their own enormous purplish flowers.


Camellias clamor from every corner, too, it seems. But today it was a pale pinkish daffodil trumpet that called to me as I walked with my son up to the Japanese Garden. I nearly heard that flower.

The son and I have been coming here since he was tiny. But a year ago, we were still mostly indoor creatures. One day at two weeks of age, I took him into the courtyard of our building, thinking he was long overdue for some fresh air, for the sight of the sky, for the smell of dirt. But he looked at me like a little blob. Take it or leave it, he seemed to say. Actually, he’d rather leave it. So we went back inside. But today he is calling out to birds and people as we walk through the woods, and his bouncing threatens my balance as we go up the wooded stairs to the garden.

I let him down on some flagstones near the Tea Garden. He’s been fond of stones lately. He finds a favorite one and carries it along, over a threshold here and past a mossy boulder there. We settle down near a favorite pavilion so he can study gravel. As I hunker next to him, I realize a square foot of gravel is a fascinating thing seen through a toddler’s eyes. The boy pops a couple little rocks in his mouth and looks at me. Spits them out on cue. Pours gravel into my hand. Holds his hand out for some. Locates the favorite stone, and hits it against the gravel. In this tiny patch of ground, he could spend hours. He could examine every rock as though it were a unique gift. Which of course it is.



Everywhere we go, I see old things through fresh eyes.













I spot things I've never seen before.



The camera seems inadequate. At best a photograph is a cue. Pixels on the screen hope to evoke the sound of water. The snowy cascade of blossoms afroth over white gravel. The way the sun rakes over texture and caresses form.

The Son spots a pagoda and calls out to it. Hey! You, standing here amid moss and trees. What are you?

Baby Buddha

Baby Buddha
Originally uploaded by Sean Maynard

Sun-block for my son’s tiny face and legs
And we walk up, up
Singing in the heat and light--
Sweet water on the Baby Buddha
Upright under flowered eaves--
Having already forgotten reason
for such a journey,
Having lost all hope to life
Made more pure and blessed.

Under the tiny raised finger rises my son’s earnest face,
awash in bloom. The world, alone and honored,
That’s us and him: all one, all once upon this time,
Together under heaven, for the bright mind is found by all things.