Dangermond.org

The Times Picayune published an article by David Brooks, who writes about education for the The New York Times – the article is entitled “What you don’t learn with a top degree” – it’s an interesting look at why we go to school as two thirds of the article is about the brain drain that Wall Street created in the last decades as it attracted the best and the brightest. Towards the end of the article he writes, “When I read the Stanford discussion thread, I saw young people with deep moral yearnings. But they tended to convert moral questions into resource allocation questions; questions about how to be into questions about what to do.”

Similarly, in my act of reincarnation or metamorphosis, I kept hinging my advancement on finding out what I am supposed to do in this world instead of who I am and how to be.

The reality is very similar to our zen reading this morning, “When you first seek dharma, you imagine you are far away from its environs. But dharma is already correctly transmitted; you are immediately your original self.”

The zen temple down the street has started offering dharma talks after the meditation on Sunday mornings and the topic has been Genjo Koan, which was written in 1233 by Eihei Dogen, founder of the Soto Zen tradition. The “issue at hand” is the koan of everyday life. And so let’s just start with that.

As I kneeled in the corner, facing the wall, meditating and practicing the tradition of letting thoughts come and go, I went through a series of thoughts about where I’ve done wrong, and where I’ve misstepped. I was able to let these go by then saying to myself, “This is my time, my time to let these thoughts go,” and come back to the breath and the meditation, but as always not without trials and tribulations.

The first thing that one of the other practicers said after the meditation was that he thought of the interchange for the monk with Zen master Boache and how there is the reconciliation that the wind is there, but he was fanning himself, and why fan if there is wind, and on and on. But he said it reminded him of war veterans who have lost a limb and how they focus on that missing limb and who they were with it and fail to see themselves as they are now. Complete yet different.

I had just been observing my bald state and lamenting the loss of my thick wavy hair and not able to fully embrace the skinhead I have become and I thought about what this guy said because I had just read in the New York Times about the artist capturing the war veterans and the images of them limbless automatically suggests suffering like my bald head automatically suggests “loss of” and my interruptions during meditation were about what if I would have done differently then I might be and that whole program.

Suppose, zen is teaching, you were whole and right then, and you are whole and right now? Suppose. “Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place.” So the monk was saying we have this reptilian brain that sets everything in its place – this is food, this is dangerous, this is home – and it likes things to be in stasis because then it can respond quickly. But the new brain, the brain up front, that is creative and imaginative, doesn’t need those references, but relying on that brain is risky and uncertain – and most of all uncomfortable.

So what zen is saying is that we are all, life is always, in a state of flux and there is no stasis. What I’m saying is that I have spent the better part of my life fighting to achieve stasis only to find myself in flux. So if you accept the natural state is flux, and if you do not hold to an image of yourself that is based on what was, but instead what is, then from that reference point is where you have to find your comfort – that the meaning of life is not to be comfortable, instead the meaning of life is to live it.

To think otherwise is delusion.

I’ve partnered with atheists my whole life and yet I’m always drawn into other’s religious views as they express them. Today, I was on the porch, watching Tin walk to the nun’s house to bring her some jambalaya, the bayou was in pristine shape, the air had the right Gulf south humidity, and there was a feeling of expansiveness all around. Let the Mystery Be by Iris Dement was playing on the stereo and I smiled when I heard it – because I felt ethereal and light. The weight of days gone by, felt gone and bye was all I could think of to say.

The mizuna that we planted in the winter has given way to blue flowers – which is rare in a garden – blue is a desired color but rarely obtained.

Rare too is the moment when everything is in harmony – work has been satisfying, friendships have been rewarding, and my circle of water is placid and in harmony. I snapped a photo of Tatjana reading Goodnight NOLA to the kids who were at the house last night, huddled around her, someone mentioned kid’s feet and how they are just impossibly cute.

We decided to go to the Quarter today for a little rendezvous only I couldn’t find a scarf I liked, and Tin wanted to wear a scarf, and well, things just got crazy in the dressing room.

At one point I looked at him and said, “If you get any cuter, I am going to have to slap myself.”

An hour of dragging through the Quarter complete with a stop at Red Lantern on Royal (Tin’s friend from school’s store), a visit to Voodoo Authentica to pick up some voodoo pencils for the friends in Zahara, and a Bloody Mary that T and I split from the Golden Lantern, soon we were so ready to come home and sit on the porch. Tin was in a great mood and ferreted out the birthday hats and insisted we wear them as we ate the leftover jambalaya from last night.

Admittedly, I look more like Mr. Bingle than Rachel, but little by little I am going to fake it till I make it.

Tin completed his first year of nursery school at Waldorf and the class went to celebrate by the Tree of Life in Audubon Park today. Many of his classmates are moving onto kindergarten so that means next year Tin will be the big boy. Hard to believe.

But Tin is ready for summer; he absconded with his classmate’s trombone and he began his lessons in earnest – musicology 101. First the moves, then the music.

Occasionally, as I’m reading the newspaper in the morning I’ll glance up at Tin who is watching me and tell him, “Look closely because when you grow up you will not be reading a newspaper.” Sure enough, yesterday the New York Times leaked that the Times Picayune was paring down to three papers a week and focusing instead on their online presence. Only, the Times Picayune doesn’t really have an online presence – the nola.com website isn’t even reliable for getting local movie showtimes as it is often hard to find.

The Huffington Post at first interested me, then it faded. The New York Times was always a paper, then it wasn’t, but I’ve gotten used to the online version, but nola.com is a poor substitute for reading the Obits in the Times Picayune, or carrying the paper with you from room to room as you finish an article.

We are living through remarkable times – and the only thing we know for certain is that more change is gonna come.

I spoke with a woman today who said this, that, it’s all up in the air, nothing predictable, hard to know what to think or hold onto. Ah yes, uncertainty, the new black. We are early adapters of uncertainty here in New Orleans, cutting edge so to speak, for the U.S. that is, because there are many countries and people that have been dealing with uncertainty most of their lives.

From the seat of advantage, country wise, income wise, race wise, culture wise – it’s not easy to have the ground shift beneath you – it’s why waterbeds came and went as a fad. People want to be on solid ground, otherwise we’d all be swaying in hammocks.

But get used to it – China today said their economy is slowing at an alarming rate. Combine that with a sinking Euro Nation and a paralyzed U.S. and you get a bunch of global gobbilty gook.

Or you learn to how to rethink instead of just think. You learn that intuition matters more than knowing. From the ground up, you give yourself over to the great adventure and say, okay, but what about this, or that, because when all bets are off, you can radically reinvent yourself, your life, suddenly it is better to not be sitting in the catbird seat because up there, you can’t live by your scrappy senses.

I was starting to feel better and I credited my newfound attitude adjustment but yesterday was like WHOA, slow down. So again, I’m back to renegotiating to take stock of what my condition my condition is in. When I speed back up to my normal pace, I get rattled not to mention nauseous – yesterday I threw up on my shoe. Ugh.

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change – this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.
Bruce Barton

Jazz is unique to us – to the U.S., to New Orleans, to this household. We’ve spent the last two days getting reacquainted with our house, our books, our selves. I listened to WWOZ playing the blues for a good hour today. I watched Tin improvise by putting his tin flute mouthpiece on his pocket trumpet – he can play. The cat mewed in syncopated calls. The dogs didn’t bark at a stranger – must not be a stranger.

Upside, downside, we’re laying the tracks.

There is a zen saying that you only know the circle of water you are in and how true that is. Today, after a restless afternoon of Tin not wanting to nap, me trying to get all the myriad scheduling and tasks done, and then trying to relax into my circle, we took a walk on the bayou and came across friends and their son – both boys have grown so much in the last six months they were hard to recognize as one pushed the other on the tricycle and the other wanted to try on the other’s shoes – it’s crazy. We are in the stream of life and it is moving with no pauses, no stops, just onward.

I could belabor my funk but instead I’ll look forward and know that the current is carrying me and I can say WHEEEEEE or I can say WHOAAAAA. And the words I choose matter.

Flower told me she took a Zumba class and so I took the class at my gym when they offered it – I didn’t like it – the instructor was unprepared and uninspired. So I wrote off Zumba as a fad. Then my neighbor/friends said they were offering Zumba at your studio on Broad Street and I went and was blown away. I could Zumba till the cows come home – namely this cow. Not only is the instructor fabulous but she let’s you bring your kid, she gathers everyone in a circle after to offer thanks for whatever, and she rocks.

So when she said she needed participants for a news clip – I jumped on it.

It was supposed to air today but got pushed to tomorrow because of another news event superseded it. But here’s my group (or part of it):