Moving quickly to the end Kuàzi in Chinese. Hashi in Japanese. We say chopsticks. I love following the words, characters and meanings. Somewhere in this 4,000 year eating utensil history, the characters suggested “quick” and “bamboo”. No Zhongwen scholar, I’ll leave that to others. I like to eat slowly, but I still call my kuàzi … [read more]
Cloudburst
In our little corner of Colorado it just rained, hard, but only for a few minutes. We opened every window in the house. Do you smell the wet earth, tall grasses, firs and pines? Our bodies relax into peaceful ease, released. You may not understand how big a thing this is in a place so … [read more]
Tilt
Happy 23.5 degree Axial Tilt Day! Up here we refer to this as “summer solstice”. My friends in the south call this “winter solstice”. In Ecuador, Singapore or Nairobi, I suppose it is Tuesday. In Colorado and elsewhere, we are as tilted toward the Sun as we get. Then we start to slingshot back the … [read more]
Father’s Day
I learned to drive a manual transmission at twelve or thirteen years old, maybe fourteen, out in the Washington desert with my old man, in a car exactly like this. Usually as the sun set over the channeled scablands of the Columbia Basin. Usually Dad had a tall vodka with ice, neat between his knees. … [read more]
Fire, please
Fire, please pass me by Please pass by the firs, spruce, and pines, the cactus, grasses and wildflowers, the bears and lions, deer and foxes, turkeys and rabbits, jays, squirrels, spiders, snakes and unseens. Fire, please pass us by. Please pass by my friend Joan and her community in Santa Fe Please pass by Diana, … [read more]
Covid Dharma
Covid Dharma 23 January, 2021 I do my best to toe the line in these covid days. So I rarely start the car, rarely drive the twelve minutes down the 1,700 feet and six miles to people, conversation, culture, comida Mexicana, and gas stations. But I went for a haircut today, fantasized showing up in … [read more]
