Note for the Time Being
(zen lessons) (2025 9 17)
These strange times are horrifying for so many, yet most of us are insulated from it. We react to what we presented with rather than from direct experience. Perhaps to calm ourselves we say "but my direct experience, what i live, is ok".
Mournfully i say, "direct experience" is the delusion. Those in power who long to assault our neighbors will insulate us from the facts of this. We need to use logic, inference, and moral reasoning to determine what is true, and look to history for patterns of how those in power are reckoned with, and how they will likely reckon with us.
We really are living in those sorts of times.
Notes for the Time Being and for Carolyn Forche, her life in El Salvador, her poetry of witness. Bandits employed by all against one and other Spies whispering edits of what they've seen in slithery corners the Capital arrayed as tentacles snaking everywhere inching Dreams i was never used to repeat themselves asleeping and awaking... We all stutter in daylight then leap from danger. Looking back i see my fear. Too late, how my meditations were about this, rather than "just this". Regardless, i was killed. I speak to you from the realm realized of demons and spies. We stroll across the ocean floor, thirsty for more.