Joel Dietz

I sit by the Roshi’s chair. It is the end of the first day. He was grumpy this morning. We are trapped in word worlds he said, if only a couple students got it, made it to zero, he would exclaim success. This does not look likely. I stare at my mind mirror, encrusted algae and fairy tale palaces. Find me Europa. Perhaps then I can settle.

I circle round the stupa. I listen to the parade of words. I weep when the deer king offers himself in sacrifice. It is the end of my beginning. Who am I? I bring no intention, I am searching for it.

Love strikes another blow — but there remains a wall around the stupa. Transcendent effort cannot break it. What will tomorrow bring?

Don’t know. Don’t know.

sent from here.

Walk by faith he said. Sight is overrated.
Then he carried me. Vision’s valley.
All the nations and their desires
Are mine.

All that is left is
to obey.

Desktop after a weekend of coding

Schubert | Holderlin Fragments, Sokrates und Alcibiades

The very sides of the grave itself shall pass,
Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void,
Into the unseen for ever, — till that hour,
My golden work in which I told a truth
That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel.
And numbs the Fury’s ringlet-snake, and plucks
The mortal soil from out immortal hell
Shall stand. Ay, surely; then it falls at least
And perishes as I must, for O thou
Passionless bride, divine Tranquility,
Yearn’d after by the wisest of the wise
Who fail to find thee, being as thou art
Without one pleasure and without one pain,
Howbeit I know thou surely must be mine
Or soon nor late, yet out of season, thus
I woo thee roughly, for thou carest not
How roughly men may woo thee so they win— ;
Thus — thus — the soul flies out and dies in the air.

Tennyson, Lucretius

Apollo

“ Contrary to Islam, Judaism has a very weak tradition of martyrdom. In the end, we are powerless against a people who are prepared to sacrifice everything.

— Leon de Winter

“

Addictive things have to be treated as if they were sentient adversaries—as if there were a little man in your head always cooking up the most plausible arguments for doing whatever you’re trying to stop doing. If you leave a path to it, he’ll find it.

The key seems to be visibility. The biggest ingredient in most bad habits is denial. So you have to make it so that you can’t merely slip into doing the thing you’re trying to avoid. It has to set off alarms.

Maybe in the long term the right answer for dealing with Internet distractions will be software that watches and controls them. But in the meantime I’ve found a more drastic solution that definitely works: to set up a separate computer for using the Internet.

— PG

Rain

Twin worlds and yet, and odor,
rises from the deep, stretching
from referent to referent,
descriptor to descriptor,
so the resonance rises
into the air, hands clasped.
‘We are children again’ they cry
as they evaporate in the sun’s
outstretched rays, forever young.

“ How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?

— De Gaulle