gone fishing

*

Last night we had roasted carrots in balsalmic honey-butter, and brazillian style collards in garlic, and a big ol’ salad. Everything from the north county farmer’s market.

Yumbo.

*

Tonight I’m making almond-crusted salmon with leek and lemon sauce, and roasted new potatoes in a spring herb pesto.

And a Norman zinfindel.

*

Fuck me running.

I like this cooking stuff.

*

We are going to join the Cal-Poly Community Serviced Agriculture program in September. You sign up for twelve weeks and pay them and they give you a big old box of whatever’s fresh and good from their organic farm program.

*

We’ve been reading a lot of Michael Pollan. The Ominvore’s Dilemma. The Botany of Desire. In Defense of Food.

Guy makes a pretty good point. 

*

We’ve bought in, lock, stock, and barrel. 

*

I think I got like eleventy-six thousand plums off the tree this morning. Time for another cobbler.

*

Ohm mani padme ohm.

*

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Peace Be Upon You

*

It’s no wonder she hates us.

*

Look at what we’ve done to her.

*

I have always believed in the power of trying hard. Trying hard will absolve you from guilt, from failures, from stupidity and greed and deep-set neurosis.

*

Ha.

*

In most arenas, trying hard, although admirable, doesn’t amount to shit. Trying hard, unless it results in the necessary outcome, is moot.

I know this.

*

From a certain distance, everything is interesting. Let’s say it: “compassion, compassion, compassion, compassion.”

“May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the causes of happiness.”

“May they be free from suffering and the cause of suffering.”

“May they never be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.”

“May they rest in the great equanimity.”

*

So be it.

*

My limitations are many and my moments of clarity few. Yet I am blessed beyond all reason. Here is my wife and daughter who love me, and all my family, who love me and whom I love. Here is my fine and agile mind, eager for knowledge. Here my stout heart, glad to be alive, unafraid of death, ready to love and be loved by all. Here my modest house and fragrant gardens, full of flowers and nectar, fruit and honeybees, birds and lizards and dappled shade and the sound of gurgling water. Here is my job where I toil for the cause of good and am paid well and am respected. Here is the very picture of a humble man living in great wealth and good luck. Does not sweet water come out of the tap when I but turn the knob? Is there not the whole world of knowledge and information at the tip of my fingers, ready at a keystroke to answer my oddest inquiry immediately? Do I not have food enough, and ample rest, and money in the bank, and health, and happiness, and moments of joy? Do I not have dreams yet unfulfilled? Do I not engage in a mighty struggle? Do I not ache and long and despair? Is not my meat pungent with spices and my honey sweet and golden? Is not my bed wide and soft? Does my sweet wife not still look at me with love? Does she not still close her eyes when I kiss her lips?

*

So be it, for that is how it is.

*

Namaste. 

***

agent

*

In Tanzania they are butchering albinos, using their leg bones and hands and hair for magical potions that will bring the user wealth.

This is happening right now.

*

There have been dead babies popping up in Dottie Bones’ blog lately. She sees them lying on the grossing table in the grossing room of the hospital where she works. It is sad to see them and it is sad that she sees them, but I imagine that she, I don’t know…I want to say that she has some way of coping with them, with the sight of them. Not that she ignores it or pretends they are something other than what they are, but…I guess that I imagine that she sees them for exactly what they are, and that by simply allowing that awful image to be what it is, to really see it and acknowledge it without falling apart or pretending it isn’t awful or any of the myriad ways we have of not allowing bad things in, she both honors what’s going on and strips it of some it the power it has to maim or work away at her.

In my imagination that is the kind of thing I wonder and think about.

*

I hope she is alright. I really do. And I hope you are alright as well. 

It’s a tough old world out there.

*

It is true that we are terrible creatures. Even those of us who are really trying to be good fail at it more often than not. You are more likely to meet with success if your aim is evil and badness. Despite the horrors, though, we keep on going. 

You would expect that it would actually kill you, the stuff that goes on.

It comes as a shock sometimes that it doesn’t. 

You just keep waking up.

*

We bang along, I guess. Mostly in the middle somewhere between the extremes of beauty and horror. I do not know what it says about me, but I am determined to make room for all of it.

Namaste.

*

Pale Green Sea

*

I am fighting off some allergies or a cold or its just the cumulative effect of breathing the Big Sur fire smoke. I feel poorly. 

Wah.

*

I bought a bike from this guy named Boon. Craigslist, man. Fiddy bucks and I’m stylin’ all over town on this sweet ride. 

How you gonna beat that?

*

I dunno. 

*

think I’ll paint it black.

*

First, though, I gotta lie down a while.

Crap.

*

Working Notes

*

Sometimes the mathematics work against you. Sometimes the odds are all wrong. It can be less simple than it appears.

One of the real foundations of my work as a cop is Occam’s Razor.

  All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.

See also, ‘looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…’

*

Sometimes, only rarely, but sometimes it is much, much more complex.

*

It can create a kind of crisis. I mean to say that I am actually experiencing somewhat of a crisis, an existential crisis, as an investigator. This is what I do. It is my endeavor. I have dedicated myself to it and you may mock me for it but it is a serious thing to me. I have never believed that I am entirely equal to the task, but have always felt that I was at least no worse than most and better than some at it. 

I have approached it with care.

I strive to make the case. I put them down. I do it right and I put them down and they stay down when I do them.

*

But from time to time a certain set of facts arise that test the entire structure. 

Which facts I am not able to articulate.

*

It is not easy to make a place for doubt. For contradiction, for a kind of large-scale quantum fuzziness in the day to day workings of the world.

*

But there are times when this becomes a necessary thing.

*

Hill Top Motel

*

May you be happy.

May you be at peace.

May you be calm.

*

Namaste.

*

Cultivating Bliss

*

I sometimes wonder if “cultivating bliss” isn’t the wrong approach. I think that would be my wife’s position on the matter. If you are trying to be happy, there is a measure of falsity to the endeavor. It’s not organic, but imposed. 

*

Therefore, suspect.

*

Certainly any attempt at cultivating bliss that insists or tries to insist on bliss being some kind of constant state must be suspect. But given a field that is barren and weed-choked, is there not some benefit to clearing away the weeds, amending the hard soil with compost, and planting some vegetables and some flowers? 

*

That’s what seems a better approach to me. 

*

Still going to be worms and gophers and rabbits and birds, and not enough rain or not enough sunshine sometimes.

But go on out there anyway.

*

Pull a few weeds. 

Prop up the tomato with a little cage for it.

*

Get a floppy hat and a book and a drink and go sit out there. 

Listen to the birds!

*

I am an anxious creature. I’m always after it, like a dog with a bone. I can’t barely sit still for three minutes in a row, but you’re lucky to get any real work out of me. I’d rather pace and whine, wring my hands. 

Peace like a river in my soul.

*

Not hardly.

*

But at forty three I am learning, by god. The great blessing of growing older is the way things moderate. I mean emotions primarily. I know if I feel bad I’ll feel better in a little while, even if conditions don’t change. My mind just can’t keep it up forever. It’ll get distracted by some other condition, start obsessing about that instead.

*

I am not my mind. 

I am not any of the things I am so convinced are me.

*

I am some other thing altogether.

*

So are you.

*

The tearful dishwasher made this for dinner:

Zuppa di pesca alla Romana and a roasted beet salad with caramelized onions, feta cheese, and toasted pine nuts.  A bottle of Castoro Zinfindel to go with.

A hard little loaf of crusty whole grain bread.

*

This is the kind of meal, when you are stove up somewhere dying all alone, you’ll say: “Well, at least I had that for dinner one night.”

*

That shit was good.

*

Namaste.

*

My Small Compassion

*

One of the benefits of living in this samsaric realm is that there are many, many opportunities to exercise my small compassion. Everywhere around me is an endless Las Vegas casino style buffet of suffering and everyone is piling up their plates with the many various dishes that so delight them. There is grasping after things, there is selfishness, there is blindness and anger and greed and hatred and bad actions. There are all manner of ways to increase our suffering and the suffering of others. 

It is on vivid display everywhere I look.

*

So, good for me.

*

This means that it is very simple to find opportunities to help. 

*

Ah, but it is never as simple as it seems, is it?

*

Because I sort of have to put down my own plate first, don’t I? Step out of the buffet line and maybe wake up a little bit to exactly what I am doing in this big old Las Vegas casino buffet line anyway.

What is the effect of all of these plates of prime rib and piles of shrimp and egg rolls and chocolate cakes and bacon-wrapped filet mignon medallions and mashed potatoes and gravy and lime jello and ice cream and brownies?

More happiness?

*

Perhaps not.

*

So, maybe first get out of line. 

*

A good place to start is with compassion for myself. This one is difficult. It really is. Luckily, I have many, many opportunities to get it right. Just today there are boundless chances. 

One thing I can do if I have difficulty generating compassion for myself is to notice when I have a compassionate thought towards another suffering being. When I notice that I am stirred in my heart at the plight of someone else’s suffering, then my heart is open. This condition is beneficial. This is the condition that makes possible the expansion of my compassion. It enables me, if I am patient and look clearly and deeply at the surrounding conditions, to expand the specific feeling of compassion I am experiencing toward one suffering person, out to the general suffering of everyone else, myself included. 

This can work in both directions. Even the shadow side of compassion for self, which could be called self-pity, is capable of opening the door to greater genuine compassion. Feeling sorry for myself is a pretty common experience for me: look how much I am suffering, look how difficult things are for me, look how I don’t have enough of what I want and I have too much of what I don’t want, look at how I keep making these stupid decisions and wrong actions, look how unfair it all is, etc. 

The key is to see that I am not alone. We are all of us suffering. We are all of us deserving of a great compassion, for things really are difficult. 

“There, there.” I should say. “I know, I know.”

*

My guess is that by extending the compassion I feel towards others, even if that feeling is infrequent and felt only dimly- extending it to my own self acts as a balm to my suffering. And extending the compassion I feel towards myself, even if dim and infrequent, to others who are not me, also acts as a balm to the suffering that exists like dark matter all around us.

*

We are all of us dancing the same dance.

*

I am trying to work this out in my own mind and to practice it in my own life. 

*

I don’t know if it works or not.

*

What I do know is that my compassion is small. It is weak and underfed. Like a wild dog that lives on scraps found in the garbage. It is small, and skittish, and ugly, and will run away or bite you if you come too close.

But maybe I can coax it out from under the porch with a bowl of clean water and something good to eat. 

Maybe if I just sit here and act like it’s no big deal, I can even make friends with it.

*

Namaste.

*

Round Three

*

I was reading this buddhist guy yesterday and, you know, emptiness, non-attachment, blah, blah. But impermanence. Saying how we suffer so from the effects of it. We want things to stay the way they are, want not to lose what we’ve got, on and on. Tremendous suffering from this misunderstanding of the impermanence of everything. But he points out, without this condition of impermanence, your child will never grow up. Or the seedling will never become the plant, which will never fruit, so you can’t eat of it. 

We should be glad for it. Make a place at our table for it.

*

I am struck dumb with simple gratitude. Like old Lester Burnham when he was lying there bleeding out on the kitchen table.

*

It’s hard to remember how good we have it nearly all the time.

*

Namaste. 

*

After The Fourth of July

*

I fester at my desk and refuse to do
the task at hand. Again, I am my own
worst enemy.

Reading in the Times today about a guy
who had a heart attack, I heard
my own mortality speak to me
in a clear voice not unlike a bell.

The coming days. Still all I think about.
Making plans but mostly anxious
I’m about to get caught out in the charade
of my imagined competence.

I am better when cobbling
something together or wrecking it
with my mute hands. Like Dugan, I’ll take
my own skewed walls and bent nails
over the clean lines of some
better builder that is not me.

I crave plain food and
the image of a particular woman,
walking away from me
or standing at a window,
one hand touching her hair.

I squander these long days of summer
gnawing the bone of my plentiful stupidity.
Jaw sore, teeth worked loose, blood
on my bruised lips, I refuse to quit
until I get
to the dark marrow.

*