Frosty 12º F

Haiku is an interesting form of poetry. Short and sweet. The essence of the moment. Nothing extra. Just right for a young Zen student.

Modern Haiku is a small press magazine dedicated to, as the title says - modern haiku. Here is a sample, which is available via Modern Haiku’s published book She Was Just Seventeen by Billy Collins.

Mid-winter evening,
alone at a sushi bar—
just me and this eel.

Billy Collins

Gratuitous cat picture (Zia).

The Online Educational Database has a new article titled “77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better“. Some great tips there. Here is a brief sample.

8. Change your focus. Sometimes there simply isn’t enough time to take a long break. If so, change subject focus. Alternate between technical and non-technical subjects.

11. Do walking meditation. If you’re taking a hike (#25), go one step further and learn walking meditation as a way to tap into your inner resources and your strengthen your ability to focus. Just make sure you’re not walking inadvertently into traffic.

19. Brainmap it. Need to plan something? Brain maps, or mind maps, offer a compact way to get both an overview of a project as well as easily add details. With mind maps, you can see the relationships between disparate ideas and they can also act as a receptacle for a brainstorming session.

44. Cross-pollinate your interests. Neurons that connect to existing neurons give you new perspectives and abilities to use additional knowledge in new ways.

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Commencement address by Steve Jobs,
CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios,
delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University.

How will these dots be connected? I really don’t know.

Northern Lights

Outside — Cassiopeia, Orion and the Dipper’s watch the Gibbon Moon traverse the night sky

Inside — Student and teacher sit and poke at the edges of Mu

Night makes room for morning — A coyote so close, when she breath her breath becomes mine. Deep in her animal samati, she calls to all the will listen “I am here, this is now.”

Morning makes room — As suddenly as she started, she stops. She looks left, then right. Waits but a few seconds, then is off. She gave a chance to match her call to all that will listen “I am here, this is now - I am here, this is now.”

Poem by Will

Original

“Whenever we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
John Muir

Earlier this month I posted about the great book “Radical Simplicity - creating an authentic life” by Dan Price and his wonderful zine called “Moonlight Chronicles”. Today several of us got a chance to meet Dan at Moscow’s independent book store, Bookpeople, and talk about simplifying our lives. I’ve followed the adventures of Dan for some time now. I first saw his photography work in an earlier zine he produced called “Shots” in the late 80’s. So it was great to finally meet him.

Dan’s van. I knew he had an Astro van but I didn’t realize it has a cool paint job. Decked out for the “Radical Simplicity World Tour”. We were Dan’s last stop before returning home to Joseph Oregon.

A little display of the copies of Dan’s books and Moonlight Chronicles zines. Quite a few had sold in the weeks prior to Dan’s visit.

Dan had camped out on Lolo Pass the night before but here looks all cleaned up and presentable talking with Bob Greene, the owner of Bookpeople.

Dan leading the discussion after his slideshow.

I got what I consider a special treat and saw a pre-production copy of issue 51 and 52. So cool to see how these little zines/journals are made.

One thing that sort has me thinking is Dan’s repeated remarks about photography. He said that he considers photography a “taking” and not as meditative as drawing. I’m not exactly sure what he means by this. It didn’t dawn on me at the time but this is sort of how some indigenous tribes must have felt when confronted with photographers. They were familiar with drawings and had seen them being made.

A photographer used to have to “take” an image and the subject might never see the image because the photographer would have to process it and in those days processing images was very complicated indeed. Now, with digital imaging, we can see the resulting images as quickly as we can with drawings.

Does taking a photograph subtract from our experiences? I think it can but I don’t think it has to. Like many things in life, the answer is complicated. It is easy to get lost in the technicalities of image making. It is easy to see the scenes before us and the people around us as subjects and the ourselves as somehow objective seers and therefore separate from nature, people and our experiences.

If instead we empty our mind of the ideas and notions that make us separate from our experiences and look for the proverbial “moon in a dew drop”, we can approximate our images with our experiences. Some images and some photographers can connect us directly with an experience. This transcends the notion of “taking” a picture.

I wish I could show an example here but I’m only a beginner.

“Radical Simplicity” by Dan Price

I just finished reading the story of Dan Price’s odyssey discovering a radically simple lifestyle. His newest book “Radical Simplicity” has just hit the bookstores. Dan is a cross between a self-described hobo and a monk. The joys of the simple life Dan leads are laid to bare in the writing and simple sketches. This book shows us a glimpse of the adventure Dan calls “Creating an Authentic Life”. He doesn’t preach - instead he leads by example with drawings and floor plans. Dan is a true explorer in this mess we call modern society and his story is a great read. Check out his current zine called Moonlight Chronicles.

Capital Community College Foundation has a good site on Grammar and Writing which contains a very intensive guide from word and sentence, paragraph to essay and research paper level for grammar and writing...

"Why create rough text? Well, it's a neat effect. You get a real "weathered" look to fonts. There are some rough-looking fonts available, but if you look at them, similar letters look exactly alike...not exactly random-looking. This effect produces some truly random rough text, and it's something that provides a good building block to apply other effects to...