I won't be posting for at least the next month....I'm going to be in Southeast Alaska doing botanical fieldwork on Prince of Wales and other islands, with limited internet connections (but plenty of wolves!), and then traveling up in the Canadian islands. I'll post pictures and stories from the other side of all this adventuring.
Meanwhile, here's a link to the anthology that I've been working on for the last couple of years, due out in September and available for pre-order now from University of Utah Press or Amazon. The writings in the book, by nearly fifty authors, are truly beautiful and inspiring.
Blackberries are ripening now, Florence, here in the Pacific Northwest. Likely you are either in Japan exploring Dogen's temples or in SE Alaska as you mention above. Of late I've been meditating on your comment---I think it was yours---on becoming less impressive. Work-related stuff brought this forward (a job application, a conversation with a colleague). Your comments on poetry and words following the Tomales Bay readings by Hass and Ondajaate bring out my own struggles to write, my own sense of what it is to have ambitions in this human life. It was Basho who, thinking back to Tu Fu and the devastation of the An Lu Shan Rebellion, wrote:
ReplyDeleteSummer grasses--all
that remain of imperial
soldiers' dreams.
Perhaps for all of us---giving voice to our witnessing the world we know---AND the giving over to the seasons, ebb and flow of tides, the turning of the earth.
Gassho,
Ewan
Sometimes, one's absence from blogging can be more powerful than a post.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to reading you again when you come back.
With much metta.