early winter

it finally snowed yesterday (flurries don't count). it was the first snow of the season and somehow missed it in action because it seemed a precisely timed and choreographed event. was on the phone; rose up to peer through the curtains and was pleasantly surprised to find an inch of snow. it had already stopped snowing but there was a quiet beauty and stillness which only snow can engender, even in a fairly ugly urban setting. it was nice to walk on the pavement this morning to work, seeing visible signs that other people had walked or bicycled earlier.

capping the mailbox
outside the door this morning-
1.5 inches of snow !!

courting trouble

today was the court appearance date for the speeding ticket. after much dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying and shall-i-shall-i-notting, decided to plead guilty but request a reduction in speed/fees. walked to the courthouse which was a sinister red brick building with hidden camerae all over the place. the main lobby and corridors was eerily reminescent of the department of magic (okay, might be the sideeffect of too much pottering). criminal/traffic 5th floor said a sign. checked in at the administrative window and requested to see a prosecutor. the clerks were really nice and courteous, a very pleasant thing considering my previous experiences at the dmv and other purveyors of govt. bureaucracy. it was a 30 min. wait before the courts opened. so tried to distractedly read inheritance of loss whilst making mental notes for the blog. the waiting area seemed like a doctor's office except there was much more cheer in the room and no magazines. most of the people were acapella with the exception of a couple of women who brought lawyers, who stood out in their suits, briefcases, thick books and plastic smiles, and two blondes (stereotypically in for a dui). there was a general camaraderie- some were chatting exchanging notes on their misdemeanours, some listening to their ipods or fiddling with their phones. a kid was tearing up and down. a sheriff, presumably in charge of court room order was idly gazing at the parking lot and frozen river through the window, bored. racially, it was largely white, a couple of young black men, a native american woman, a couple of chinese guys besides the lone indian. the courtroom opened at 1.15 and everyone trooped in leaving their coats outside. it looked just as in the movies except the benches felt like a church bench sans the bibles. a video was played spelling out the rights and privileges that was repeated in spanish and at least 4 far eastern languages (vietnamese, hmong, cambodian?) besides arabic (somalian flavour). then began the wait for the prosecutor's call and as luck would have it, my paper was with the slow one. the fast one was settling most of the cases with an occasional person opting to see the judge. finally she tried pronouncing mano... i explained that i was speeding but not at the speed stated (51mph) and that i had realized i was speeding and was slowing down when the cops caught up. she asked me if i would pay if she made it 45 mph (which was what i said i was going at and in retrospect, my greedy mind thinks i should have said 40) to which i assented. end of story. made out the check for 142$ which was 80$ less than the original 222$. walked back to work and it was much colder and the sun had vanished. the frozen river across the bridge looked colder than it was coming in a couple of hours earlier. all in all, it was an interesting first hand experience with the law and order system here.

cross-cultural note- while paying the fine at the clerk's window, there was a laotian/cambodian? man who was requesting for a public defender with the help of a court interpreter. the clerk made him repeat the 'i swear i am saying nothing but the truth' via the interpreter and across the glass partition, which he religiously did. he then brought his palms together in a characteristic asian gesture and left. wonder what the clerk thought but here is an occasion where a hand shake would not have worked. somehow the handshake seems patriarchal and dominating compared to a more humble gassho, which conveys equality better.

leaves and adjectives

cruising the wonderful, word-filled phrontistery website and especially savouring the adjectives of relation section. spotted a few omissions, some obvious and some not-

annelid: pertaining to annelida (earthworms)
arenaceous: sandlike or growing on sand
cetacean: pertaining to whales (cetacea)
chondral: of or pertaining to cartilage
cristate: having a crest (e.g. mitochondria)
lanate: wooly or pertaining to wool
ligneous: woody
scolopendrine: pertaining to centipedes (order scolopendra)

leaf shapes and margins are described by beautiful adjectives such as hastate, obovate and acicular, and rugose and crenate. [digression: it is hard to punctuate complex constructs like the preceding sentence where i am describing two different ideas- shapes and margins- with multiple examples for each. how does one use conjunctions correctly and appropriately use the dreaded combination of commas with 'and's? ]. found this gem of a drawing in wiki. a friend and i had shot the breeze about tree identification using computer vision awhile back and leaf shape would be a good starting point.

early winter !

it dipped to 8F last night. i guess winter is officially in. the nest on the gingko tree outside continues to sway in the cold gusts. a sole leaf still clinging in solidarity..

swan lake

went to rieck's lake park in alma, wi to check out tundra swans. most of them had left and we saw a small flock of them dozing in the sun on the ice along with slumbering geese. it was windy and that made it cold despite the deceptively warm 41f sunny weather. alma is a nice town and could have been scotland or new zealand as v pointed out with its bluffy landscapes, cattle and a waterfront. the main street was picturesque and quaint. saw a couple of eagles cruising the bluffs that overlooked main st. left after having americanos at a local cafe/gift shop. checked out the beach en route. it was blustery and bitterly cold; we saw a big rafter of swans on the other shore but too far away even for binoculars. drove back via potsdam and plainview and took pictures of haybales, something which has been long overdue. somehow the landscape looked like a pink floyd album cover, perhaps a subliminal entry of a momentary lapse of reason. made mental notes of a lot of trees in the vicinity which might be good candidates for a winter snow session.

late autumn

oxbow park was lovely. took the maple trail which was paradoxically strewn with oak leaves. while the trees were bare, the ground was a beautiful brown carpet of oak leaves. it seemed to be waiting for snow. some streams had frozen, some were thinking about it and some had changed their minds, creating mosaics of light and sound, white ice and black water, clear flow and tinkling water gliding through miniature ice caves. the undulating margins of the oak leaves created some lovely icescapes on the streams.

stereotype

was curious about the etymology of stereotype. it is from Gk stereos meaning solid and in printing parlance refers to a method of printing from a solid, raised metal type. sometime in the early 20th century, as words and phrases are often wont to do, it jumped from its printing press origins to the present meaning of an oversimplified generalization. people often talk of stereotypes as if it is a bad thing per se. the inherent act of stereotyping is itself fine and mostly correct in whatever sense of the term. obviously people have seen enough of something to generalize it. what is missed is that it is not the only image or view a person is evoking when using a stereotype. recently, i saw an ad on an airline magazine which had an obviously geeky looking young chinese (american) kid [ok, geeky and chinese american are already stereotypes, the kid is shown having big ears, bad teeth , oversized spectacles and, um, sino features. he could have been vietnamese or hmong or taiwanese, first generation or fourth] holding an orrery in his hand and the caption says "we are like the geek you loved in primary school" or somesuch. my immediate thought was ohmygodthisissostereotypical and it sure was. but then many chinese americans i know are geeky. the problem is not with what the ad shows or says. it is with what it does not say. what about the margaret chos and the yo-yo-mas?

why do we create stereotypes? to generalize, to pigeonhole, to classify. why pigeonhole? to form grand theories in which all phenomena (perceived) fit or can be slotted. there are so many stereotypes we come across in america- the christian right, the bleeding heart liberal, the gun-toting libertarian, the gun-toting, bling wearing gangstuh, the motel owning gujarati, the jewish doctor, the dumb blonde, the alabaman redneck, the desi shoftwear shyshtem person and so on. they can be complex like the bespectacled, bearded soft spoken foreign film watching 40s white man (thanks to my friend ps who loves this image) or the long haired, earth mother goddess, vegan raw food, shopping at coops, antiwar and doing reiki 40s white woman. we also straddle and move across stereotypes. i landed fresh off the boat in 92 and fit into the stereotype of yet another iitian, fighting with roommates over grocery bills, calculated to the 4th decimal place, going to desi parties where anthakshari is apotheosis of the indian arts, having mostly desi friends with an occasional phirang to go to lunch with and explain intricacies of indian culture which i myself never cared for growing up (you see, in india everything is sacred including the cow and rajanikanth. that's why jains don't eat anything grown underground). by 4 years, i had lots of amru friends, shopped organic at the local coop in cloth bags, listened to carnatic music, rode a bicycle, went on backpacking trips [its an eclectic mix and not a stereotype- ego] and so on. then the semisuburban lifestyle of working at an MNC, driving a car but still shopping organic and having eco-footprint concerns. okay, i take it back. some stereotyping can be dangerous and downright disgusting- the stereotyping of any young black male as a dangerous criminal or a pusher or the obvious stereotyping of people with beards in a post-9/11 world or the stereotyping of islam itself as has happened in some circles. it seems like some form of a hopeless defense mechanism, a vain attempt of protection against an unknown danger, an armour that is bound to break. the biggest danger in stereotyping and broad classification is the dualistic framework it creates and forces- us vs them, he vs she, republican vs democrat, pro-life vs pro-choice- a dialectic that is doomed to fail.

i wonder if the problem of slotting into stereotypes can be cured not by asking people not to slot (which has been tried in vain) but by increasing the number of slots. so its like having 64000 shades of grey instead of 2. then classification becomes impossible. imagine someone who is slotted as a stereotypical "republican" today who is also eco-conscious, who goes to church but also believes in darwin, who is anti-war but pro-life. what will you call her? but then maybe i am just dreaming.

the river

it started flurrying yesterday but it was warm and the flurries melted before any accumulation. i can now see the house across from the yard from my kitchen window, now that the ash and walnuts have dropped their leaves. there are still a few trees with golden yellow leaves remaining in the lower branches, mostly maples, but it is a matter of time (wind, actually).

vinu and i watched jean renoir's le fleuve (the river) today. a lot of directors ascribe formative influences to this documentary like adaptation of rumer godden's novel. today, it seems ordinary and the dialogues especially by the indian characters a bit stilted and school-dramaish. i can see it making an extraordinary impression on a westerner in 1951. for one, it was the first colour film to be shot in india and renoir's first colour film as well and it does a lot of justice to it. the story is about the coming of age of harriet (the narrator) in india, where she lives with her 4 sisters and brother, parents and an indian nanny (nan) in a village by the ganges, her father being the owner of a jute mill. she is immediately infatuated (in an awkward way that only a teenager can) with capt. john, an american war veteran who is visiting his cousin an englishman who lives next door to harriet. equally smitten but in a more composed, obvious manner is valerie, the more beautiful, older redhead although there doesn't seem to be any tension between harriet and her because of this. adding to the confusion is melanie her neighbour's daughter from his marriage to a local woman. her feelings for jack are characteristically indian- unexpressed and confused. there is one lovely scene where they are all chasing him in a banana grove like gopis chasing krishna (and valerie is the lucky one to be kissed). as the movie progresses, love cools, harriet's brother gets bitten by a cobra and dies, capt. john returns back to the us, another baby sister is born, life continues, the river flows.

the narrative structure is like a documentary and the portrayal of india is a bit romantic but there is no trace of condescension or colonialism in the treatment of india. sometimes, there is overt emphasis of the mysterious, peaceful life of the hindoo on the riverbank but it is no different from the feelings i have when i visit a quiet village today in india. it seems like an idyll. and there are no elephants, tigers or bengal lancers as renoir says in an interview. the music is a mix of hindustani sitar and carnatic veena and vocal with a bharatanatyam tillana sequence thrown in but it does not seem jarring or artificial at any point. in fact, if anything flows smoothly besides the river, it is the music.

views of love

today, i watched two movies on love- truffaut's love on the run and edward yang's yi-yi. the first is a slightly soppy final episode of the antoine doinel series starting with the unforgettable the 400 blows. the latter is less a conventional love story than a peep (ok a prolonged stare lasting 3 hours) into the life of a taiwanese family comprising of the grumpy looking nj who is in a floundering computer firm, his wife who is on the edge, his adorable 8-year old son yang-yang who is forever harassed by older girls, his cute adolescent doll of a daughter ting-ting who is just discovering love and loss and most importantly his wife's mother who is in a coma after falling in her apartment on the day when her son a-di (nj's chubby brother-in-law) gets married to a girl who is very pregnant much to his mother's disapproval. all the family members (except yang-tang) take turns speaking to her and that is the only way their emotions are expressed, an interesting artifice. the contrast between truffaut's flamboyant, at times adolescent antoine doinel whose impulsive quirks and neurotic pace and nj's repressed emotions and outwardly calm demeanour are striking. there is something about not expressing things explicitly that is at once the bane and beauty of asian culture. nj runs into his childhood sweetheart after 30 years and there is a possibility of romance (and adultery, as both of them are married albeit not in intimate terms with their spouses) when she visits him in tokyo where he is on business. they embrace warmly, recollect their first dates and even hold hands but nothing more is said. the inevitable kiss and the bedroom sequence never happens. never shown, a western critic might argue, missing the point. the deft handling is very reminiscent of in the mood for love although lacking the texture and tone of wong kar-wai. antoine on the other hand is living a carefree life, only occasionally living in the past recollecting his loves and upsetting his current lover sabine, whom he first meets in a situation that can only happen in a french movie- unknown angry man (lover?) rips a photo of his wife(lover?) into bits in a phone booth, our hero finds it, puts it together, roams all over paris and finds her and of course he has already fallen in love with her. voila !. antoine is believably passionate and lives in the moment as much as nj is sadly passive and resigned. love on the run makes use of wonderful flashbacks from 400 blows, colette, and stolen kisses- previous doinel movies. yi-yi is firmly grounded in the present and is an unsparing portrait of every one in the flat and their violent neighbours and their quotidian problems.

there is also a nice buddhism connection in yi-yi. nj's wife is advised by her friend nancy to take refuge in a mountain (chin?) temple and told that the master would find a solution to all her problems (sounds familiar eh?). both nj (and his wife who only says so later) are skeptical of talking to the gods and asking for solutions. i will ask the gods to help only for my major troubles, quips nj when the master visits his and ask him to come to the temple. they all spoke to me like we spoke to my mother, says nj's wife after the funeral. here is an example where buddhists are shown praying rather than meditating. this is probably the norm in asia for laypeople. meditating laypeople is a very american thing albeit not necessarily a bad thing. in fact it might be the unique thing about the american flavour of buddhism.

yesterday, i lit an incense stick and decided to sit in zazen for the entire period it burns. i waited till the last ember glowed bright, gasped for its last breath and fell down softly onto the incense holder. it was about 45 minutes. for the last 5 minutes, i was mainly looking at the stick, almost waiting for it to be over. sort of like sneaking a peek at a watch during meditation, which i surprisingly used to do when i started with the kwan-um school.

reading the faces of buddhism in america (ed. charles prebish). it is a scholarly (occasionally pedantic and theoretical but for the most part written by scholar-practitioners) treatment of the various flavours of buddhism available to the spiritual seeker (or shopper) today in america and how american culture and ways of thinking and social norms have influenced the evolution and praxis of american buddhism (zen, theravada, tibetan); orthopraxis as one essay puts it versus orthodoxy. this is an interesting topic and leigh and i have had many discussions on this. her usual response is that i am not a big fan of americanized buddhism with its group therapy like group talk sessions and i am not. this book would like me to believe that even the korean or soto zen schools i have been associated with is an americanized version of the more rigid, strict patriarchal parent schools in korea and japan. now there are two (possibly more) ways of looking at this and i can hear two voices reading this book although one is a feeble cry. one is to lament the americanization of buddhism in the sense that america is essentially imparting/imposing an ethic of individuality and democracy and equality (easier in a clique of middle-class white caucasian males with a grudging tolerance of women due to sheer numbers of white women in these groups). another way is to see how buddhism has evolved from its metaphysical roots in india to the freewheeling ch'an school of southern china, across korea and to the institutionalized but form-filled soto-rinzai lineages of japan and accept this as a natural fate of everything- afterall buddha dharma is subject to its own laws of impermenance too. the truth as in most cases is in between. it seems like the biggest hurdle to accepting buddhism in its spicy east asian form is not the cultural aspects of it (endless cups of barley tea and kimchi in lunches during kwan-um retreats and the corresponding japanese counterparts of sencha and miso in soto-rinzai sesshin suffice as evidence) but the concept of a monastic sangha, a sangha of bhikkus and bhikkunis as opposed to lay-people. ironically, it is in america that a bhikkuni sangha has the greatest chance of survival and acceptance due to the strong patriarchal asian traditions. i see the beauty and elegance of a system of philosophy and praxis which does not impart excessive importance to a monastic, renunciatory lifestyle but at the same time we cannot forget that the leaders of current american buddhist institutions are either monks from asia or westerners who have trained with asian monks, usually in the respective original countries. that could pose a problem to the continuity of the tradition taking a leaf from how quickly "indianness" dies out in children of abcds as they melt into the pot. but is that bad or lamentable? i think this is something only time can tell but then it is worth being careful before experimenting lest the buddha gets thrown with the bathwater. an essay also talks about americans reinventing the dharma wheel which is a very apt comment and it is probably a matter of time before some local guru patents zazen. the second half of the book deals with issues facing buddhism in america- feminism, homosexuality, racism whilst the first half deals with the flavours of buddhism- chin, japanese zen, pureland, tibetan, theravadin, vipassana, vietnamese....


my own personal experience on this has been interesting. i stumbled into kwan-um school at the local unitarian church on knapp st. in milwaukee and slowly started attending their mon/thu sits and then ymjj's as they call their sesshins. at a formal naming ceremony, i got a cool grey robe with a kasa and a korean name replete with a certificate and a branding on my left forearm with incense (a reminder of the shamanistic influence on s'on buddhism in korea). daegak, the guiding teacher of the kwanum school in maryland, broke away from the kwan-um school but continued a lot of the traditions. he dispensed with the 108 bows and the formal meals but the spirit continued- the dokusans, the long hours of zazen, the general form. i have sat occasionally with a japanese group usually on new year's eve for the kanzeon chanting or at a sesshin with one-drop zendo at whidbey. what was interesting was that there really was no major difference except for minor forms- clapper instead of moktak, a bell instead of moktak and facing the wall as opposed to facing the floor. i did not realize that that is in some sense the american influence and emphasis on meditation over rituals. i do miss the traditional retreat. in contemporary retreats there is no oryoki or meal gathas, no chanting and they are less form al. recently, i have been sitting with a local group which is led by doug mcgill, a theravadin/vipassana aficionado. there is no form, no instructions and sometimes it can get very annoying especially when there is a post-praxis discussion on enlightenment or metta. sometimes we listen to guided meditations from the insight meditation center or a talk by eckhart tolle. the sessions end by doug asking everyone-

so it's time to go
breathe in, breathe out, a few breaths
and let the words go.

verse or worse

what shall i write now,
now that autumn is over-
haiku or senryu?

apple gotsu

i take simple pleasure in discovering new recipes- just the germ of the idea not the actual details, which i do not bother following anyway. and i have been stumbling across gems recently- cardamom lemonade at the hokyoji retreat, karela thogaiyal (chutney for northies and non-indians) which subbu made, and recently apple gotsu (or gojju as supriya calls it). and i made it (up) last night.

use sourish apples. i used honey crisps which are sort of a local gala. cut the apples into crescent wedges or cubes. fry mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, urad dal and dried red chillies in a tsp of oil and when they turn golden and start to splutter, add the sliced onions and then the apples. add a little bit of water and let it stew. add salt to help the process. sugar is optional as the apples are sweet anyway. when the apples start getting soft, add more water, dissolve a tsp of tamarind paste, add some sAmbAr powder, bring to a boil, then simmer and let it thicken. the apples should get soft but not crumble. garnish with curry leaves (preferred) or cilantro. serve with rice and/or chapatis.

okay i cheated a bit by using sAmbAr powder. you can also dry roast the spices including hIng and grind them and make a paste with coconut like for sambar ab initio. but yesterday i didn't have the time, inclination, patience, coconuts or hIng !!

baby

returning back from chicago to mplis, i saw the same lady (who spoke german to her two year old) with her two year old again !! this time the baby was crying loudly- the poor thing- as her mom was trying to stuff her strollers and bags into the already full luggage bins, just like last time and just as flustered. and she left her on the seat by herself just like last time. so i guess it is her baby-nature :)

reading kiran desai's inheritance of loss. it sparkles.i think she has inherited the same gift for writing, the same evocative description and a way with words that her mother (one of my, if not the favourite indian-english writers) has. "pigeons shuttlecocking along the hallways", "cauli-flowering in the brain", "lascivious subway breath peering up skirts" and it goes on. it is set in lush kalimpong where she must have spent her childhood and i am sure a lot of it is her own experience especially the interactions with the cook and the anglicized bongs and the gurkhas and the tibetans. all of it has a ring of familiarity if you have visited one of the NE hill stations but yet it is still so refreshingly described.

and she even uses one of my favourite words- borborygmus (besides gems like circination and eructation and a host of lovely, esoteric nouns and adjectives). the sometimes ostentatious display of vocabulary is reminiscent of cry, the peacock, which is still my favourite anita desai novel.

the darjeeling limited

the premise might seem cliched- three brothers, who are from NY and whose father has just died in a traffic accident, travelling in north india in a train and having zany adventures with the natives. of course, as expected, they argue, fight, brawl over silly things like a pair of outrageous sun glasses owned by their father, a painted leather belt, an old school shaving razor. except for a little stretch towards the end where the story seems to be lost and slows down to almost a stop like their train does, there is never a dull moment- just like india itself which ram guha aptly called the most interesting place on earth. other things can be disputed but not this. something chaotic, wild, unpredictable always happens in india and in this movie too- whether it is a cobra escaping or a quickie in the western style toilet with the sweet-lime bearing stewardess or attendance at a funeral of a boy who drowns, his brothers having been saved or for that matter the cunning artifice of using a short film screened prior to the main feature, introducing the past life of one of the brothers. of course there are quintessentially indian elements- cows on the road, swigging of cough syrups and sleeping pills easily procured at the local pharmacy, tilaks and marigold garlands, gawking natives, rajasthanis in their colourful turbans and beautifully painted and clean houses, quaint signs like 'ticket window' and 'station tempel [sic]'. it does lose steam in the end and it is not exactly clear why they are in india- supposedly to take their mother, who has become a nun in the NE, back to NY. what is clear is that all three of them are trying to escape their past and looking for salvation but are hopelessly attached to their baggage including the funky hand painted brick red suitcases they lug around or rather have porters lugging around everywhere which they finally symbolically get rid off in trying to get on the train.

the music interestingly enough is a pastiche notably using music from satyajit ray's films- jalshagar, apu trilogy.. overall it was enjoyable and probably more so if you have travelled in india and on indian trains.

TNS

saw TN Seshagopalan (with mullaivasal chandramouli) in concert at the pittsburgh temple. before that there were fireworks for deepavali and a styrofoam dinner (desi fare for oldies, pizza and brownies for the ABCDs who had obviously been forced by their parents to don their indian clothes and attend diwAAAlee.

TNS started off with an aTa tALa mOhana varnam (mana mOhana). his voice sounded a tad raspy and with a tinge of coryza. he followed it with the majestic shankha chakra in pUrNa chandrikA. his voice was terrible and the beautiful lilty swaras were a bit offkey and strained esp. at the high octaves. somehow his singing reminded me of someone with ALS. mind is active but muscles do not obey, in his case vocal cords. he then launched into a passionate pUrvI kaLyANI AlApana and maybe it was due to the tumblers of coffee he was swigging in the chaste no_lips_to_the_glass iyengar way, his voice improved greatly by the time he was finished with the a and he followed it with the sedate parama pAvana rAmA (by pUchI?) complete with neraval and kalpanaswarams. i had already made up my mind to stay after the AlApana instead of going to watch persepolis as was planned earlier. the next piece was a pleasant surprise- he did an exquisite rendering of sAmA (the violonist had a hard time matching this) followed by a lovely composition, i think of his own, called thAyE thanaIyan sEyE with the wonderful rhyming on the second syllable. i don't think any other poetry save tamizh has this rather idiosyncratic rhyming scheme. the composition itself was beautiful and had a lilting gait with a sesha mudra. he mercifully spared us of KS or neravals which would have been like adding feet to a serpent. this was quickly followed by a reasonably elaborate rendering of gANgEya bhushanI (sari evvare ramiah) of thiagaraja which i actually figured out ab initio :) head of nATa (unmistakeable R3 G3, tail of kIravANI. the only other thing would have been sarasangi but the R3 G3 was so obvious. by this time, the man was in his usual form with the occasional apaswaram. by the time he was deep into kharaharapriya, he was the TNS of the passionate high octaves and elaborate kanakku fame. he sang the gem of a thiagaraja composition (well they are all gems aren't they) soumitri bhAgyamE again replete with detailed neraval and KS. felt bad leaving during the thani that followed but had no choice.

overall it was an enjoyable concert despite the raspy start. it was probably the only detailed sAmA rendition i have heard and of course my ego was thrilled at detecting gANgEyabHushanI. i actually didn't miss an RTP although it would have been good to listen to a rAgamAlikA with his wonderful ability to switch between rAgAs.

babies and blackboards, on board

on my flight to chicago, i sat next to a midwest mother who had a 2 year old on her lap. now, it is illegal to keep your handbag on your lap but i guess it is ok to keep a baby. this one was the sweetest 2 year old girl and we played the usual peekaboo but she, like a cat, had her ways and deigned to occasionally curl her lips in a half smile but that was it. throughout, the mom was cooing to her in german and pointing out things excitedly to her in german and she was drinking it all in not to excitedly but with a calm repose. then suddenly out of the blue (ha ha it was in the blue) the plane lurched and entered a turbulence. all the adults were clearly uncomfortable and their facial muscles tense. the 2 year old suddenly started giggling and smiling. it was amazing. only a 2 year old can probably do that. and then calm returned to the plane and the baby. weird.

my second flight to pittsburgh was rent by howls of a 2 year old sitting behind my seat and fighting with her sister and bawling almost through the flight. what a contrast. i guess babies develop personalities early on. so is that original nature? again i find myself thinking about buddhism and observing the mind and true nature. we are told and to some extent it seems plausible that we all start tabula rasa. when and where does it get chalked in? who does the writing and is there a duster? or a wet cloth like we used in school sometimes? there certainly are parts which say 'do not rub' on this big blackboard of the brain, at least pour moi.

lame

excuse. it was ismrm deadline and i spent 14 hrs typing away. it was really a weight lifted as i walked back home. its the same story every year and i have stopped trying to pretend to try and submit early. after all adrenaline works.

gusty autumn nights-
clinging to bare branches of
a gingko - a nest !

the burmese harp

this was my second viewing of kon ichikawa's timeless antiwar statement and it was interesting to contrast it with resnais' hiroshima, mon amour which i also watched again after this. the burmese harp is about a soldier, mizushima, in the imperial japanese army during the final days of the war in burma. he and his regiment, led my a sensitive, musician-captain who is forever making his company practise choral music, have surrendered to the anglo-aussie forces and are sent to a camp in mudon. meanwhile mizushima, who we are told has become adept at playing the burmese harp and is never seen without it and even uses it to signal to his regiment on scouting missions, volunteers to go on another mission to convince a small band of renegade, never-say-die japanese soldiers holed in a nearby mountain hideout to give up their arms and turn in. they inevitably refuse to and get killed in the ensuing battle. mizushima himself is wounded and nursed to health to by a buddhist monk whose robe, we are shown in a flashback, he steals and proceeds to go to mudon dressed as a monk in hopes of reuniting with his regiment. en route, he sees hundreds of japanese soldiers dead, their bodies decomposing and being eaten by vultures and decides to stay back to give them a decent burial. in the meantime, the regiment in mudon get their release orders and are preparing to go back to japan, still concerned about mizushima's whereabouts. they hear his harp, they even see him carrying the funeral ashes in a box (a Japanese custom, says the sergeant) but are still not sure if it is a burmese monk who happens to look like mizushima. if mizushima can look like a burmese, then there could be burmese who can look like him, reasons one of the soldiers. in a moving final scene on the ship back to japan, the emotional captain reads out mizushima's letter to his brothers-in-arms where he states his reasons for not returning with them and that he has been accepted into priesthood. the narrator, who we have, until then, only heard, is revealed to be a nondescript solider in the regiment.

the horror and uselessness of war is almost in-your-face throughout the movie- the decaying corpses, the morale of the soldiers themselves and their insecurities of going back to a post-war japan whose horrors they cannot or do not want to comprehend, contrasting with the massive, reclining buddha statues, the elegant pagodas, the impassive burmese who just seem to watch everything around them with a calm detachment, the serene monks, in short burma itself. the black and white photography is stunning especially when exploiting these contrasts (of attitudes and light). the sometimes stark sometimes lush landscape of burma is always creeping in.

if at all there are any flaws, it is the clumsy portrayal of supposedly sikh soldiers who are basically english guys with blackened faces, white turbans and fake accents. one could easily accuse ichikawa of not portraying the brutality of the japanese army. in this case, they are shown to be sensitive and feeling human beings but i think that is the point. in bringing out the humanity and buddha nature even during war and in the victors and the losers, the essential universality of buddha nature is brought out. i also feel that for ichikawa, war is inherently a destructive and pointless act, whether it is a righteous one or not and the horrors of war need to be discussed and kept alive so that collective amnesia does not permit the repetition of mistakes, each one exceeding the previous in enormity.

resnais also uses horrifying images from the hiroshima aftermath but only in the overture. the tragedy is viewed at a closer, personal level- nevers and hiroshima merge and he brilliantly uses imagery to bring about this transference- the survivors in bed with riva in bed, the survivors whose hair falls out with riva who is shorn, and finally the german lover with the japanese lover. but there is a certain mysterious almost ominous note when she says it will all happen again. it is far more subtle than his wry comment that they might perhaps meet if there is another war. there is also a tension between memory and forgetting, a tightrope walked by all the characters including the cities of hiroshima and nevers.

the monk who tends to mizushima says burma is buddha's country. i can see why monks are the frontline in opposing the burmese junta and also bear/bore the brunt of the recent brutal crackdowns. i cannot help go back to the opening and closing lines of the film- "the soil of burma is red, so are its rocks". red-with the blood of the soldiers who died and now red with the blood of the monks who were shot. there is still hope- hope like the red rubies that red soils produce, hope that the junta will pass and peace will return.

a cloud sails past my
window and merges-
with the burning midday sun

speeding

Today, i got my first ever speeding ticket near Viola or I should say, in Viola, along that 300 yard speedtrap where it changes from 50 mph to 30 mph. I saw a car pulled over on the opposite direction and neither did slow down nor notice two other sheriff cars in my own direction, a fact the cop gently pointed out when he handed me the ticket and wished me a good day. That silenced me, for awhile. I do not know if it is the act itself, or the 200$ fine or the lack of mindfulness which upset me. hopefully the latter but probably a combination of all three. i will now be careful when driving those country roads.

later that evening and the next morning, when i watched The Burmese Harp, it seemed to bother me even less.

tolle

yesterday at doug's, we listened to eckhart tolle, who talked about the little "me"s we keep creating and imbuing stories and power with. we make up a entire novel populated with "me" protagonists, he said. he also extolled on the virtues of the here and now. his accent made "now" sound like "null", maybe my feverish subliminal imagination, but divorced of its nihilistic tones, null could quite well replace now. he sounded a lot like jiddu, i must say- clear, lucid, simple and not a word out of place, not a filler "um" or "well" or the pernicious "like". too simple, actually.

i was, as usual, getting annoyed with talk (reality) and anticipation of talk (my own projection) about enlightenment that inevitably followed the sit. the problem with jiddu (and eckhart) is they make it (enlightenment) sound so simple and yet in some curious way, their words have the power to delude. eckhart mentioned that the fact that we are here (this was a recording from a retreat) already meant that the process [of enlightenment] has begun. there is always a good reason to motivate people in a retreat. i have experienced it many times, especially after the first day when the monkey mind is looking for loopholes and exit strategies. but it can be misleading after a 20 minute fidgety sit. enlightenment is letting go of things, someone said but in the process, we can easily not let go of that idea. in fact, that makes all the difference. and even that idea itself is attachment. i wished linchi were there to whack me with his stick. or seung sahn sunim who would have probably said, "if you open your mouth i will hit you three times. if you close your mouth, i will hit you three times."

sitting with doug's sangha has been difficult but interesting. i am grappling with the koan of how to express real concern about attitudes of people who come to sit without crossing over into the territory of my ego claiming superiority of zen experience and my own opinions. for instance, i wanted to tell the new guy not to sit on the sofa like someone watching a baseball game but rather keep his back erect and unsupported. is that my ego or is that my genuine desire to help him? same for people moving their limbs, heads, rustling their jackets, scratching an itch, whatever. its a slippery slope. seung sahn sunim's koan of dropping ashes on the buddha cannot be more apt.

what should you do? what can you do? what will you do? I love the subtle change in meaning and tone the different modals impart to this sentence.

#FFFF00 -> OR

early morning tea,
and sun- transmute walnut leaves
from yellow to gold !

L

i nearly fall
crossing frosty railroad tracks-
must be end of fall !