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The Journey to the West

Though we journey to the West We pray to the East More or less that's the way Each day begins and ends It’s a tale everyone ...

Thursday, May 23, 2019

The Lament is the Mode of Our Age (take 2)

The lament is the mode of our age
(though a philippic or two still lands on the page)
8 billion prisoners
Of the self-same dilemma
Admit it or not
We all share in the blame
And soon your safe house
Will be a sauna too
Though Mr. Schmertz assures me
Hell is all powered by fossil fuel

Friday, May 17, 2019

To My Own Devices (by Li Bai)




Facing the jug
Oblivious to the night
How the petals have fallen
To fill up my gown

Drunken I rise
And stumble towards
The light of the moon upstream
With the birds so far away
And people so few
And far between





自遣

李白

对酒不觉暝
落花盈我衣
醉起步溪月
鸟还人亦稀


*******


Addendum: Counting the Blossoms


Last night
Sitting up late
Drinking red wine
With Li Bai
This morning looking
At the lawn hungover
I wondered just how
Many petals it took
To fill up his gown










The Moon Amidst a Brocade

Half an hour before sunset Against a backdrop Teal trending to gray The moon appeared As a cloud among equals Part of the cumulus brocade Draped across the sky

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Living in Metaphor (part 1)




Last night walking my dog into town I had this strange sense of passing through a Hollywood movie lot.  The façade of the storefronts seemed to be just that, as if the small town where I live had contracted further still by losing a dimension.  Just beyond the storefronts, I could sense, lay another world, another plane of reality quite different from what presents itself along Main Street here in Mayberry RFD. In truth, only a few hundred feet behind the storefronts, the gravel lots give way to pasture overrun with weeds.



So much of what we know of the world we learn from the various media we consume.  Our sense of what’s real and what’s not is itself entirely constructed by the thousands of books, movies and TV shows that flit before our eyes.  Common sense tells us there’s a difference between stage and reality when in truth there’s not all that much because our sense of both has been similarly contrived by the very same means.  All the world being a stage is no mere figure of speech but a metaphor that conveys an extremely radical and much deeper meaning about the experience of being human.  How like players on the stage we are never quite ourselves yet always hungering for more love and applause.