The Open Road: a learning community

peace, love, happiness & understanding 6/1/23
2023-06-01 - 2023-08-02
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

June 1, 2023

Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations.
—William Blake

PEACE

Early Morning Hours

From the house silence flows
to the ebony lawn
glittering like a river.
A small candle flickers,
mirroring the moon
sliding down night’s curve.
Fir branches stand against the sky,
the hours’ tall sentinels,
and the hum inside silence
fills each shadowed crevice,
the world inundated.

The Only Now

The stripped body lies burrowed
in a flower well, utterly still,
and one wonders
if it has died into the nectar.
Sheltered by night,
in the morning the bee resumes
sipping, covered in pollen
bumbling from flower to flower,
his home where he stops,
satiated with sugared gold,
his life and eating and bliss,
sleep and journey all one.

Unexpected

Rampant weeds crowd bee balm and hyssop,
dirt clings to roots, leaves bend
and in the midst of this fecundity,
I am digging, pulling, only
the sun’s heat on my back.
Moving through the afternoon quiet
a feathered sound of wings
is near, slower and closer,
and a light weight comes to rest on my head.
Could it be? I reach a hand up,
the wings lift, rise, and are gone.

The Tree in the Universe

Light glints off cherries in the branches
swaying slightly in summer breezes.

I too am swinging, shimmering, high
in the tree, resting in a dark trunk

adrift and asleep, the sky
dappling the light in the tree,

above the ground air my companion, birds
my companions, jumping and wondering,

all of us in the branches, in the light,
time a mystery that moves in the tree,

off the ground, as my vision,
my mind unrolls in front of me

carrying my heart forward and backward,
inward, time and space a single pulse

and the cherries shine, the tree grows
quietly upward and outward, carrying me,

the birds, and all around, all around,
right here in the branches, in time and in sight,

I see that, yes, yes, each particle,
each moment turning in the sky,

in the tree, flowing between us,
in us, what I imagined, what I dreamed

and dreaded and is now here—all of it divine.

—Deborah Buchanan
*

A couple months ago my friend Ken Margolis was listening to the news. He heard a report on the war in Ukraine. Both sides were said to be running low on ammunition, because they were both using 1,ooo artillery shells per day. Two thousand artillery shells per day! More than one per minute. It was insane. He told his friends, including me. He wondered: Is there is anything we can do to bring this war to an end? That question prompted me to choose the theme “Peace” for this month’s peace, love, happiness & understanding. The word “peace” has two main connotations: the absence of war, and a calm, quiet state of mind. When I invited people to contribute to this issue, I said the topic is “peace,” but didn’t specify which kind of peace.

For me, the “two kinds of peace” are not unrelated. In the early Eighties I wrote a fairly long essay called “The Ecology of Violence, the Ecology of Peace: A Lived Revolution—Personally, Locally, Globally.” In it, I explored topics like Authority, Poverty, Education, Cruelty, the Media, Meditation, Economics, Ideology, Ecology, Family, Culture, Community, and many more. One of the primary insights of Ecology is that everything is inter-related to everything else. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of “interbeing.” It seems to me that our “job” is to help to co-create a culture that nurtures all people, and to learn or re-learn how humans can live on this planet without destroying it—like all the other animals do.

My outlook on life has been shaped by the fact that instead of going to Vietnam to kill people, I went to India and studied with wise yogis. When I think of war, instead of thinking about brave soldiers fighting to make the world a better place, I think of that photograph of Vietnamese children who have been bombed with jellied gasoline. Every day the war goes on in Ukraine, more children die. More mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers die. It’s insane.

Here’s a poem I wrote:

My Foolproof Plan for World Peace

I hereby declare today to be International Love Day.
And a General Armistice.
All hostilities must cease on International Love Day.
Henceforward, every day is International Love Day.

—Johnny Stallings
*

Alex sent this poem by Tom Clark:

Bolinas

My wife’s recipe for a fairy:
Put buttercup pollen
And a canary feather
In a thimble. At midnight,
Immersed in my life’s current
However it may flow
In the giant life around it
That whispers like a tree
Rocked by evening light,
A tide of beams
Bears my dreambound boat.
The boughs drop peace,
A star wanders toward dawn
Over the dim wet leaves.

—Tom Clark

—Alex Tretbar
*

To me lately, peacefulness is just being a happy person and trying to make others understand happiness in just a few seconds of every moment. If one can achieve this their life will be happy. I found this secret on my journey to the golden path. A friend told me about the golden path years ago. I live there now and the town I live in on the golden path is called simple bliss.

I also find peace in the sweat of my brow from a job well done. I can’t wait to work hard for the ones I love. Peace is free and it lives inside of us and if you have it in you, my friends, give it to those that don’t.

—Rocky Hutchinson
*

Siddhartha’s prayer

When they asked why he left
his people and his palace,
the response rose like fragrance from summer’s garden.
There is peace in every breath, he said,
and every heartbeat
and every footstep
that will no longer be forgotten
or forsaken.
I wish every thought to be a prayer
every word to be a poem
every touch an act of love,
and all to be
as it already is.
– amen

—Bill Faricy
*

Surrounded
Memorial Day 2023

Perhaps there is the sound of water,
the feel of a light breeze, comfortable
warmth, rustling leaves.

Maybe the colors make harmonies,
smell of sandalwood, taste
of cardamom on the tongue.

The temptation of a ladder rung
to a nest above ruins sharp
edged with smoke, mist.

Missed. We’re here. This list
of all that’s lost, endless. Still
fingers uncurl from a fist.

In the end everyone was right.
All we wanted was a sense of
belonging, a path, not a fight.

Instead, a respite, for now.
Forever? The crowd surrounds us,
whether we are aware, or not.

—Elizabeth Domike
*
Peace Tree

My calling is to rise. My purpose is to reach.
Where buildings fall, I stand silent in the shouting.
Even in billowing dust, I begin the next peace. If
you splinter me, I will heal. After the battle, I will
silhouette dawn. I have seen seasons pass, the rising
of anger, fury of the storm, return of calm. I’m still
yearning for the sun, still delving into dark. Rooted
patriot of Earth, I drink the sky to give you breath.
Neutral in war, I shade both sides. Send my seeds
across the border, I will be your diplomat of green.
If you plant me beside the graves of soldiers, I will
say to their mothers with my leaves what they
might have said in the wind that stirs.

—Kim Stafford
*

Peace Within, Peace Without

Who doesn’t want to have peace within him or herself? Who doesn’t want to have world peace? I would say there are very few people in either category—a few, maybe, but not many.

Here is an inside aside:
Can you have peace without love?
Can you have peace without joy, either within yourself or in the ‘world?’
Is peace synonymous with love? Is love synonymous with joy?
Are there other words that define or are requirements for peace? Compassion? Connection?

Well, I’m just throwing these out there, as you can see, but let’s go back to peace within/peace without.

How can you be at peace within yourself and not be concerned about the world? It is overwhelming to think about trying to ‘fix’ the world, for sure. We all know how that feels. Might as well give up on that and just work on being at peace within yourself, right? Well, that is impossible, my friends. A spirit at peace is one who gnaws away, tackles, wrestles with—inch by inch, foot by foot—-some part of the exterior world that is hurting, be it other humans, other creatures, the world of nature. We do the work often never knowing whether or not we are achieving change, lessening hurt, creating love, creating bond and connection and unity. This is not why we do it; we do the work because the work itself is what grows peace within us. And—-we have to do it.

Ha ha—but don’t get the idea that it is easy. It can be frightening, hurtful, frustrating, and really hard; but something in us is propelled to keep on. And whatever that ‘something’ is, brings (paradoxically) an inner peace.

So we have to be in the world, doing our bit, small as it is; but always, all of it, from all of us is growing peace in the world. And just think if each and every one were to do this! World Peace!!!

Working on the peace without is essential for the peace within…and vice versa.

—Jude Russell
*

The trouble with peace seems to be that it isn’t enough for us. Of course, war is the ultimate step in a power struggle to determine who gets the gold and the throne. So, in that sense, battle skills are the most useful of all skills.

But there is something more. At the same time we fear war, we lust after it. We sing of arms and the man. War becomes the context for heroism, nobility, and deep companionship. It also destroys the beautiful, kills the innocent, and generates hatred in future generations.

In spite of Elon Musk and other technological self-deceivers, most people feel intuitively that life and death form some sort of continuum. To manifest its cycle of renewal, life needs death. Does peace need war in some mysterious way?

When we think of Heaven, we think No More War, green meadows and grandchildren on our knee, not the whole thing blown to bits by an incoming drone. War has its lobby, its advocates and advertisers, its prophets and profiteers. It’s only fair that a few of us take the other, apparently less popular side, and advocate for peace.

—Ken Margolis
*

“Peace has been a theme in some of our earlier issues. Take a look at the peace,love, happiness & understanding Archive on the Open Road website. Here’s from June 24, 2021:

https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-6-24-21/

For July, send me something about your own vision of Utopia or Paradise.

peace,
Johnny

Johnny Stallings performs Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" 5/27/23
2023-05-27 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
painting of Walt Whitman by Rick Bartow

For Walt’s 204th Birthday, Johnny Stallings will be performing

Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

at PAUSE

PAUSE is a meditation studio — 133 SW 2nd Ave., Suite 300, (door code 54445)

Saturday, May 27th, 7:30 p.m.

a benefit for the Open Road Film Fund
(for distributing Bushra Azzouz’s film “A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison”)

for info, call Johnny: 503-347-6869

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 5/21/23
2023-05-21 15:00 - 17:00
Nobel Prize-winning author, Doris Lessing

Beloved Bibliophiles!

The theme for our next Bibliophiles Unanimous! Zoom dialogue is Favorite Women Authors! Please join us at 3 p.m. (PDT), Sunday, May 21st.

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

peace & love

Johnny

Deck Boys Friday Night!
2023-05-19 19:00 - 21:00
Music Lovers!

This Friday, May 19th, from 7 to 9 pm, Deck Boys (https://www.deckboys.com)–featuring the inimitable Jeffrey Sher!–are gonna rock the Ross Island Grocery & Cafe, 3502 S. Corbett, Ave, in Portland.

Wanna have a good time?

This is the place to be.

peace, love & music

Johnny

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 5/15/23
2023-05-15 - 2023-06-14
May 15, 2023

Let your heart speak to others’ hearts.
—tag on Yogi Tea bag

Gandhi Returns

As if he had said enough in life, he uttered
not a word where we stood in the station
in my dream, only a stillness in the bustle
all around us. Instead, he listened, turning
his bright young face in welcome to every
traveler as they made speeches of their own.
A mother told of her son, and in Gandhi’s eyes
the boy was hero. I told him how Ali in Tehran
had written me that poetry is oxygen, and in
Mahatma’s eyes, this was a truth no gun
could injure. One by one he summoned
witness from each pilgrim. Then, smiling,
in his folds of pale cotton he helped us
struggle with our luggage onto the steaming
train. And when I turned, I saw he had none.

—Kim Stafford
*

Alex Tretbar sent two translations of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke—showing what a big difference a translator’s choices make. He prefers the Robert Bly version:

PALM

Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walk
only on feelings. That faces upward
and in its mirror
receives heavenly roads, which travel
along themselves.
That has learned to walk upon water
when it scoops,
that walks upon wells,
transfiguring every path.
That steps into other hands,
changes those that are like it
into a landscape:
wanders and arrives within them,
fills them with arrival.

—translated by Stephen Mitchell

PALM OF THE HAND

Palm of the hand. Sole that walks now
only on feeling. It turns over,
becomes a mirror,
shows sky roads, which
themselves are walking.
It has learned to walk on water,
when it dips down,
moves on springs,
causes all roads to fork.
Comes forward into other palms,
those like itself
turn into a countryside,
through them it travels and arrives,
fills them with having arrived.

—translated by Robert Bly
*

I saw lots of Jet trails in the blue sky gaily criss-crossing
and wondered how many of us might be able to see them.
Then this poem, that our beloved friend and Zen teacher
Bob Schaibly liked, popped into my mind.

Love Note

Let us hire a hundred planes
Stuff them with hot cotton smoke
And write white poetry on the paper of the sky.
Let the ant people on the hot summer beaches look up squinting
Read feathery descriptions of your lips,
Traced by the sky writers.

We’ll pick a calm noontime,
Sun pressing wrinkles out of the steamy sea
Sky flat, receptive.
“Love,” I’ll write, and “mouth,” and silver words.
“Cling,” I’ll write, and “Stars,” and oh, don’t worry.
The words will all come easily enough.
It’s the idea that matters.

Then I’ll fly up in the highest plane’
And jump and parachute right through
The O in the word “Love”
And land in your backyard,
And kiss you – home again.

—Joseph Siebel

—Katie Radditz
*

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels…
—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

The Miraculousness of Everything

Because life is short and each day is precious, I like to begin each day by entering what I call “the Golden World”—a state of quiet joy. To do this, I often reflect upon the miraculousness of everything. Puffy white clouds floating by in the sky—how do they do that? Where did these coffee beans come from? The trees I see out my window have brand new bright green leaves. How did that happen? Our neighborhood is full of tulips. The irises and the rhododendrons are just starting to bloom. The daphne and the daffodils have had their glorious days. The laptop computer that I’m typing this on was undreamt of when I was a boy.

Maybe the most impossible and amazing thing of all is that I am alive and aware. My eyes, brain and nervous system somehow create the illusion of a three-dimensional world in full color. Scientists might say, “It’s just photons of light hitting the surface of the eye, sending an electrical current to your brain, where the synapses in your visual cortex something something something…” Huh? Photons? Synapses? Brain? What the heck are those? Where did they come from? One of my little poems goes like this:

there has never been
is not now
and will never be
anything more perfect
than this glass of water

Oops! Here I am again…in the Golden World.

—Johnny Stallings
*

#186 The First Noble Truth
“The Buddha told us to recognize the First Noble Truth, the truth of suffering, and to look deeply in order to discover the Second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering.That is the only way the Fourth Noble Truth, the path to transform suffering into happiness, can reveal itself. So we have to emphasize the role of suffering. If we are so afraid of suffering, we have no chance.”
—from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh

When I was in the midst of deep suffering, of course I couldn’t comprehend that this was a good thing, leading to happiness. Sure didn’t feel like that to me.

The suffering was thirteen years of marriage to a raging alcoholic—yes, “raging” is not an exaggeration. Trying to cover a black eye with makeup, wearing long-sleeved shirts to cover bruised arms, making humiliating excuses for his passing out on the floor in the presence of company, sharp, cutting words more lasting than any physical pain…on and on. I thought if I left, I would be seen as a failure in my parents’ eyes, so I stayed and endured and excused for, yes, thirteen years. Believe me, I was not thinking of these years as those leading to happiness. Upon divorce (thank you, Al Anon), I eventually became a new person—or I became who I had been before marriage, Jump-up Jude! I felt like a helium balloon released into the sky. Happiness and euphoria beyond belief. However, I lived periods of time (and still do!), infused with what I would now call PTSD: Once I clambered over audience-filled seats in a theater in Ashland to escape sitting through a play by Sam Sheppard about an alcoholic husband who goes to bars and trades his car for bags of green peppers, which he drunkenly spills on the kitchen table as he lurches home to his wife. I can’t watch the movie Elephant Man, or The Days of Wine and Roses. Much as I wanted to, I could not even sit and watch the delicious hunk, Bradley Cooper, starring in A Star is Born, as he devolves into violent and abusive alcoholism. And I just can’t be around drunk people. I feel like I’m suffocating.

So where does the happiness component come from that??? The happiness and benefit come from my ability to connect and empathize with others who have been traumatized by life experiences. The kids I mentored, the Indian woman whose family I helped for 18 years, and most especially, the men in prison I have spent time with for seven years; I have not lived their lives, nor have they lived mine, but we all have had deep trauma and all can relate to one another’s deep trauma in a blessedly bonding experience.

It truly is sheer happiness when one understands, and is understood by another, in experiences of trauma and suffering. I wouldn’t trade it for the world!

–Jude Russell
*

Out Here

We come out here to watch the stars
fade as Orion heads home towards
the horizon. Low lying mist obscures his
turning as waves curl and crash, foamy flow
up on newly deposited rocks, old wood,
yellow toes of bald eagles foraging
among crows, pink footed gulls.

Light comes up slowly burning mist
away. As we are away at the edge of the
known world. Beacons of cable laying ships,
barges full of earth slowly appear
as tide comes in. Now there is color
as sky settles into her blue cloak, hovers
protectively around the huge remnant

Rock of sister cape worn down, left
standing alone in calling distance of
shore. Before us feasting on starlight
the sword edge crescent moon glints
over barrier pine hills,
sweeps the way clear, for us to make
what we can of this fresh new day.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

Michel is using a book by Pema Chödrön, based on the slogans in her teacher Chögyam Trungpa’s book Training the Mind: And Cultivating Loving-Kindness, as inspiration for his April meditation and mindfulness journal. Here are some excerpts:

April 4, 2023 #35 Don’t try to be the fastest. Don’t compete with others.
I might offer a step further along: Don’t compare self to others—don’t get judgy, of anything. I’m finding this is one of the lasting legacies of Jake Merriman and OHOM in my life: the letting go of judgement words. To do this one has to follow Johnny Stallings’ trait—compassion for everyone. I find that letting go of obsessive need to categorize and judge, or sort out good/bad, like/dislike, etc. I will vie less and less against others, or even self, for prizes that do not exist. From this less judging space it becomes easier to understand and have compassion for an other, and eventually even for self.

April 20, 2023 #48 Train without bias in all areas. It is crucial to do this pervasively and wholeheartedly.
IT’S IMPORTANT TO INCLUDE EVERYONE AND
EVERYTHING YOU MEET AS PART OF YOUR PRACTICE.
THEY BECOME THE MEANS BY WHICH YOU
CULTIVATE COMPASSION AND WISDOM.
Who doesn’t want to cultivate compassion and/or wisdom? I certainly have been striving to do this. There are certain beings (things are also included in this teaching—sigh) with whom I have a very challenged relationship. I don’t like them, they don’t like me, and neither is open to changing this. Yet, I’m certain (from all my readings) these others are here for some greater purpose in my life; shouldn’t waste an opportunity to grow, I may not get another one—then what? Go about with a malformed (uncorrected) ego, as I do now? No thanks! I guess I better get busy with my work/training.

April 21, 2023 #49 Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment.
DO TONGLEN PRACTICE WHENEVER YOU FEEL RESENTMENT.
DO IT WITH SMALL THINGS ALL THE TIME. THEN YOU’LL BE
PREPARED TO WORK WITH THE BIG ONES WHEN THEY ARISE.
It seems wise to work with resolving one’s resentments, before they grow into “hates” for people, beings, or things. I believe all mindfulness practice is like this; sit now, in silent reverie, so amidst a fierce stormy barrage calm may prevail. Everything would simply build from there. Just breathe…

April 23, 2023 #49 Don’t be swayed by external circumstances.
WHATEVER YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES, PRACTICE TONGLEN.
WHATEVER IS WANTED, SEND THAT OUT; WHATEVER IS
UNWANTED, BREATHE IT IN AND EXPERIENCE IT FOR
YOURSELF AND ALL OTHERS IN THE SAME BOAT.
This speaks to equanimity—not allowing the outside storms of life to sway my little stuff. Currently, I am bracing for the eventual passing of my father, whom I’ve come to love very much. Alzheimer’s is taking a toll on his mind and personality. I don’t see it yet, but my mom has to deal with many of the challenges that are arising. There’s nothing I can do for either of them; letting those concerns frazzle me doesn’t help any. All I can do is keep doing as best as I can. I’m not ready to let him go, and at the same time he is already gone. My father I knew as a child is long gone—the one with whom I had so many conflicts and struggles—and the one I’ve come to know, love, and appreciate from prison, he, too, is now gone. What’s left is the husk of of a man I once knew for his strength and resolve. He’s not dead, nor has his mind gone completely yet. However, the inevitable reality of time’s ravaging of mind and body are no longer easily ignored. It is time to embrace each moment, as it may be the last one I get with him. Whether by phone, or if I get to see him once more face-to-face, truth is present that we all proceed apace to the same destiny—each on our own path and in our own time.

—Michel Deforge
*

Dear Mindful Meditators

Our Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue began on September 15, 2020. It is mailed to 10 people who are in prison and emailed to about 60 people who aren’t—including 9 men who were in prison in September of 2020 who are now out of prison! Hallelujah!

We had our first get-together on Saturday, May 13th, at Taborspace in Portland. In attendance were: Charles Erickson, Nicole Rush, Sam Muller, Nancy Scharbach, Katie Radditz & Johnny Stallings. We talked about how our “life journey” and our “spiritual journey” are the same thing. Everyone shared stories from their life. Abe Green visited us from Montana—via FaceTime. We all had a lovely time together.

May all people be happy.
May we live in peace & love.

—Johnny

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue Gathering 5/13/23
2023-05-13 14:00 - 16:00
Dear Friends

You are invited to join us for our meditation & mindfulness community’s first live get-together, this Saturday, May 13, from 2 to 4 pm, in the Artspace Room at Taborspace, 5441 SE Belmont Street, in Portland.

In September of 2020 we began our Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue–sending it to friends inside and outside of prison walls. Many of the “insiders” have gotten out of prison since then. Currently, the Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue is mailed to ten men in prison, and is emailed to about 60 people who aren’t in prison. If you are getting this email, you are one of the 60 lucky “outsiders.”

This will be a lovely opportunity for everyone to have a dialogue and get to know each other better.

We hope you can join us!

peace, love & happiness from

Johnny Stallings & Katie Radditz

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 5/7/23
2023-05-07 15:00 - 17:00
from Liber Novus (The Red Book) by Carl Jung

Beloved Bibliophiles!

The theme for our next Bibliophiles Unanimous! Zoom dialogue is Psychology. Read any books on this subject? Got any insights? Please join us at 3 p.m. (PDT), Sunday, May 7th.

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

peace, love & psychology

Johnny

Jon Bennett performs Fire in the Meth Lab at ADX
2023-05-06 20:00 - 21:30
The Open Road invites you to come and be astonished by Jon Bennett’s brilliant show: Fire In the Meth Lab, Saturday, May 6th, 8 p.m., at Art Design Xchange (ADX), 417 SE 11th. Doors at 7:30pm. Click here for tickets:

Jon Bennett has crafted a powerful story of addiction and family. When I saw this show, I laughed and cried as he took me on an unforgettable journey. Not to be missed!! –Jeffrey Sher

This is a benefit for Outside In. Since 1968, Outside In has transformed thousands of lives by helping to break the cycles of chronic homelessness, poverty, and poor health. Our health clinic and young adult programs strive to provide safe, caring, affirming spaces for our community to receive judgment-free care and support. MISSION: We help homeless youth and other marginalized people move towards improved health and self-sufficiency.

Thank you to Ronni Lacroute for sponsoring this event.

War in Ukraine Dialogue 5/4/23
2023-05-04 10:00 - 12:00
PLEASE JOIN A DISCUSSION ABOUT U.S. INVOLVEMENT
IN THE WAR IN UKRAINE
The Open Road invites you to take part in a dialogue about the War in Ukraine, and our country’s role in it.
Thursday, May 4th, at 10 a.m.
The Gallery at Lolo Pass, 1616 East Burnside, in Portland
For questions or information call Ken: (503) 351-5891
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous use of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
—President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961
FREE ADMISSION

peace, love, happiness & understanding 5/4/23
2023-05-04 - 2023-05-31
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WAY YOU SEE THE WORLD

May 4, 2023

When I first read Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, I realized that literature could be even more powerful than I had known. Powerful enough in this novel to make me feel acute embarrassment, shame, and humiliation–unsavory, and unforgettable emotions. It was, in that sense, one of the most unpleasant books that I have ever read–but I suffered those ugly emotions because I was in empathic thrall to the characters, which was thrilling. Christina Stead had such power over me that she could compel me to keep reading even against my own will. Sixty years later, the book stays with me.

—Ken Margolis
*

The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison

As the first book in the Inspector Shan series this book gave me a glimpse into the history and current status of the relationship between Tibet and China. It also gave a different perspective on Tibetan Buddhism, a more human practical one, and it opened me to a world of beliefs deeply different from those I had learned about in the West.

There are ten books in this series.

When I first met Andrew, he had an “Endlessly Connected” bumper stick on his car that was flanked by two Meander Knots. A simple design, the endless knot iconography symbolizes samsara—the endless cycle of suffering of birth, death, and rebirth within Tibetan Buddhism. The intertwining of wisdom and compassion. Also, the Interplay and interaction of the opposing forces in the dualistic world of manifestation, leading to their union, and ultimately to harmony in the universe.

The books have a starkness to them. As mysteries they are dark and sometimes brutal, but the characters, particularly the lamas have stuck around in my head since encountering them. Andrew and I read them at approximately the same time, sharing tidbits and references and when it came time to name our poetry press, little magazine and open mic, Meander Knot was the obvious choice.

We even got identical tattoos as both a branding exercise but also an expression of perhaps a deeper connection between us and the possible connection over more than one lifetime.

And then, when I started teaching yoga, I called the business “Meander Yoga”. The endless knot is not featured specifically in the books, (although I suspect it is mentioned. I am planning on re-reading them this year and will find out) it symbolizes to me the deep cultural richness in the books and how that richness has enhanced both my spiritual, but also my artistic life.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

Hi Johnny!

There are so many books that have changed me and/or inspired me but the one that comes to the top of my mind is Hope for the Flowers. I’ve read this book so many times and have shared it with so many people. It’s such a sweet and simple illustration of transformation but also of embracing who you are right now.

On a totally different note, I remember reading Johnny Got His Gun for the first time and being in awe. It was the first time I really sat and pondered what it means to be human and what makes life worth living.

Oh, and of course, Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth!

I’ll stop before I start listing 100 books.

—Nicole Rush
*

The Mahabharata retold by William Buck

I first thought Peter Brooke read this.
I found it falling apart in a free box or a yard sale.
I found I couldn’t read it.
It sat on the bookshelf for a couple of years. I kept an eye on it.

One morning in Parkrose neighborhood, on a north deck, watching the planes glide in over the trees and rooftops, following the river west to PDX, I saw the sun was shining after endless rain.
A cup of coffee was there, and the time had come to open the book of wonder.

—Charles Erickson
*

beautiful morning, Johnny. good question!

I immediately thought about how I felt after reading Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson. I had never had an English teacher in High School assign anything like it to read. I think I was the only one in the class who liked it or even read it. So for one thing it forged a bond with my fascinating lovely teacher.

Mainly it opened up a world of wonder about the wild, where savage had the meaning of wild/wyld people in a forest wilderness unmitigated by modern civilization. It is about true freedom compared to that of the birds.

Hudson writes with a clear style that matches his view of beauty and wonder being the essence of life. It is a love story as well as a tragedy of what would come of nature.

Now I’ve pulled it out to read once again. I had forgotten the main character’s name is Abel—my first son’s name! I think this story has stayed with me in my deep consciousness.

In the forward, John Galsworthy wrote in 1918 that Hudson was the most valuable author of his Age. He says of Hudson, who was a naturalist as well as an author: “his nomadic records of communing with men (women), birds, beasts, and Nature, has a supreme gift of disclosing not only the thing he sees but the spirit of his vision. Without apparent effort he takes you with him into a rare, free, natural world, and always you are refreshed, stimulated, enlarged, by going there.”

—Katie Radditz
*

About ten years ago a good friend of mine urged me to read Nicholas and Alexandra, by Robert Massie. I was reluctant, because, as I told her, “I don’t do history.” She said, “Well, do!” I said that because up until then the only history I’d read had been high school and college textbooks. I’d read, study, take a test and then forget everything (hopefully in that order). I read hundreds and hundreds of novels from junior high school on—Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky, etc.—so it wasn’t for a lack of love of reading, just no desire or aptitude for history.

But I read Nicholas and Alexandra and loved it! It’s the story of the last czarist Romanov dynasty and its fall. I’d never known much about Rasputin, but he figures in powerfully, with the strange spell he held over Alexandra and her hemophiliac son, Alexi. It was probably more biography than accounting of events. It led me to Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, both of which were also biographical, with dominion, control, conquest, acquisition and rule over dozens of countries in that region threaded into their stories.

So perhaps it’s biography rather than history that has opened up a new world of reading for me.

In that vein, I also read American Prometheus, the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb.” Strange reading material, eh? But he was such a brilliant polymath and was forever conflicted about how his genius was put to use.

Right now, it’s The Orientalist, by Tom Reiss, the life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best selling author in Nazi Germany. It looks at the early 20th century and the origins of our ideas of race and religious self-definition, and the beginning of modern fanaticism and terrorism.

So now it’s geography in addition to biography and history, and I’m sitting with the big World Atlas and a magnifying glass, scrutinizing Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus, Georgia, Turkey…

To wrap this up, explorations in readings of geography, biography, and history have expanded my vision, experience, and understanding of the world in these last ten years, thanks to my friend, Nikki! (But I still love novels.)

—Jude Russell
*

Alice Miller’s book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childhood and the Roots of Violence changed the way I look at individual acts of violence and collective acts of violence—war. The basic thesis is simple: abusing children—physically, psychologically, emotionally, sexually—wounds them. She says that when we grow up, we unconsciously and compulsively re-enact the violence that was done to us. Randy Newman’s song “I want you to hurt like I do” sums it up. The violence can also be directed against ourselves. There’s more to the story than the idea that we are, by our nature, violent apes. We certainly have the potential for violence, and we also have the potential to be loving and kind. It depends which seeds we water.

It follows from this that to the extent that we can be loving and kind to our children—instead of mean and cruel—the world will be transformed in positive ways. Conscious awareness of what we suffered and how it has affected us can help us to not act out the same things that were done to us. Her book helped me to better understand how “hurt people hurt people.” Instead of judging people for the suffering they’ve caused, I want to know about the pain they’ve suffered.

Susan Griffin’s book Woman and Nature brought home to me the relentless way in which men have defined, dominated and oppressed women over the centuries. Her book is also a visionary call for women’s (and men’s) emancipation from this tyranny.

Antler’s poem “Factory” changed the way I see the world around me. Having read the poem many years ago, it still manages to regularly remind me that the paint on the walls, the windows in the walls, the lightbulbs, the refrigerator, the glasses on my nose, the computer that I’m typing on—almost everything that surrounds me—was made by men and women working in (ugly, noisy) factories (which pollute the air, the water and the soil).

Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” inspires me to see beauty everywhere, to love everyone, to be astonished by the miraculousness of everything I touch, taste, see, or imagine.

—Johnny Stallings
*

FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
Thanks for the reminder, Johnny,
You introduced me to that book ages ago, and I carried it around with me for a long time.
It says lots about childhood and being treated as a child by adults who are very busy in their own sphere.
It has left a lasting impression on me.
I’ll see if I can come up with another that has been useful as a life reference.

—Todd Oleson
*

In the recent Open Road letter you asked about life-changing books—or at least life-influencing ones. Many of the titles you sent me fall in this group. However, due to space limits, I’ve sent the most helpful ones home and forgotten the titles. Some others include: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison by Shaka Senghor, The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose by Chris Wilson. I’m working through My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem—a bit “woke,” but still has relevance. Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw. Mmm…I’ll have to come back to this.

There’s a small-ish list of books I hope to read this next year—after ordering, of course. Some may trigger comments and feedback for others I’ll need/want to read, or even avoid: 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes, something by W.E.B. Du Bois [his two most well-known books are The Souls of Black Folk and Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois—ed.], Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development by Ann S. Masten, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker, Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication by Oren Jay Sofer, and Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.

Oh, The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk, on trauma—this was helpful. So many helpful books, and all the best are at home. This is great for when I get out (15+ years), not great for now. Oh, and I have crossed the halfway on April 9th: 50% done, 15¾ years left.

—Michel Deforge
*

Dear Reader

Next month (June 1st), our theme is Peace.
Send me something.

peace & love
Johnny

Bibliophiles Unanimous!: Shakespeare Birthday Extravaganza!!! 4/23/23
2023-04-23 15:00 - 17:00
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:

Beloved Bibliophiles!

This year is the 400th Anniversary of the “First Folio” of Mr. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARES COMEDIES, HISTORIES, & TRAGEDIES. Shakespeare’s Birthday, April 23rd, falls on the day we do our next Bibliophiles Unanimous! Zoom gathering–at 3 p.m. (PDT). To celebrate, an all-star lineup of actors is going to read scenes and speeches from Shakespeare’s plays.

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

DON’T MISS THIS!!!

peace, love & poetry

Johnny

Bottom. There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself, which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that?

Snout. By’r lakin, a parlous fear.

Starveling. I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.

Bottom. Not a whit. I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed. And for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 4/15/23
2023-04-15 - 2023-05-14
Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

April 15, 2023

Dear Mindful Meditators

Our Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue began on September 15, 2020. Recipients include people inside and outside prison walls. It is currently mailed to 10 men in prison and emailed to about 60 people who aren’t—including 9 men who were in prison in September of 2020 who are now out of prison! Hallelujah!

We are going to have our first get-together on Saturday, May 13th, from 2 to 4 p.m., at Taborspace in Portland: 5441 SE Belmont.

This will be an opportunity for people to get to know each other, and to have a dialogue about our life journey—what it means, what we love, what we do to nurture peace, happiness, goodness and understanding in our own life and in the lives of others.

I hope you can come! Bring a friend, if you like.

My friend Rocky Hutchinson, who is a member of our meditation & mindfulness community, called me the other day, and was excited to tell me about an author he had just discovered—Kahlil Gibran! Back in the day, The Prophet was an essential book in every hippie’s library. Rocky’s enthusiasm inspired me to re-read it (after 50 years). This quote from The Prophet relates to our upcoming gathering:

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving….
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughing, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

—Kahlil Gibran

peace & love, y’all
Johnny
*

Dreaming in Detail

The casting director for my dreaming
I can understand—bringing in my parents
from gone, grown children as infants again,
and a parade of strangers, each with a bit part
fraught with obscure purpose. The location scout
found familiar places, made them mythic, then
added an abundance of tunnels, caves, cities
in ruin, and a foggy coast. My costume director
surrenders to seasonal change—blues in spring
yielding to summer gray, and autumn black. But
why is the director of photography so obsessed
with effects of light both atmospheric and exact?
In one scene we see fine hairs on my father’s arm
glitter in low sun, then a heap of medieval coins,
then that lost button shining on a stone.

—Kim Stafford
*

A Fish Describes Water

There are prayers best said
only at night, in depths, water steps
rubies in the mouth.

Wind ripples across moon grass
longing to be released by washed
stones. The rowboat

is empty. What remains
is a song, a solitary gold-winged
warbler, the pattern of rain.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

What do you do to nurture peace, love and happiness in your life?

Recently I had a chance to sit in on a phone call with Johnny and Rocky Hutchinson. Rocky is one of our inmates in the dialogue group, and he is one of the dearest human beings I’ve ever known. He has been in prison for a long time, and has had quite a—well—rocky experience.

I asked him how he was doing, and what he was doing, and he told me he had just finished the Master Gardener program, and he was also training dogs for use with people with disabilities. He loves it, both the gardening and the dogs.

I said, “Rocky, you couldn’t have picked two more valuable activities for the soul than gardens and dogs!” And I realized that that is just how I feel: Gardens and dogs fill my heart and soul like nothing else.

You all might have heard that digging in dirt, the smell of dirt, of the soil, stimulates endorphins in the brain, the happiness endorphins. True! Of course, I don’t head to the garden thinking, uh oh, I think I need some of them endorphins about now! No, it’s just an instinct, a drive, that takes me there. And planting carrots, chard, beans; digging watery moats around the tomato plants (the smell of those tomato leaves!); cutting bouquets of coral colored peonies and lavender irises (the smell of irises!); picking green beans with glints of sunlight beaming through the vines—all of this settles in me and brings focus, joy, and quiet peace to my soul. Gardens, yes!!!

And dogs! Lolo! My love! Some friends took care of Lolo while we were gone and when I asked how she’d been, they said, “She had us with one look into her soulful eyes.” So true. She looks into your heart and understands when you’re sad, she rejoices when you’re happy, and every emotion is acknowledged with a loving and energetic lick on the face. Ick! you might say. Not at all—it’s the lick of love. Don’t you remember that Dusty Springfield song, “The Lick of Love..(is in your eyes…?”) Oh wait—maybe it was “The Look of Love.” Whatever.

Anyway, she’s a soft and fuzzy and uncharacteristically sweet-smelling dog! What more can you ask for?

SO: gardens and dogs. Rocky, you’re so right. But I must add that it’s you, Rocky, you and all the other men in our dialogue and theater group who bring peace, love and sheer happiness into my life, and I am forever grateful.

Addendum: But how could I have forgotten hiking??? Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams, my two sentinels. How could I have omitted family, and dear friends? Music!!! Riding my bike! Art! Books and reading!!!

What a topic!

—Jude Russell
*

To nurture peace, love and happiness I simply do nothing.

Each morning I take my coffee out on the porch and watch the daybreak. I say my little peace prayer. Then I do Nothing. I don’t analyze or plan or meditate or cogitate. I find myself surrounded by the sky. Maybe the moon is out, or the sun comes up. It’s a moment of peace and harmony, and I did nothing to get here. I merely stopped distracting myself.

I can’t spend the whole day sitting here. There’s still clutter in my life or my mind or my house that needs some tending to. But when the morning starts out this peacefully the rest of the day usually follows suit. Our natural state is peace and love, unless we sully it up. How can this not nurture some happiness?

Thanks, and love,

—Bill Faricy
*

In the chalice of the heart,
Lies love’s sweet essence:
Born of the seed of truth;
Watered by the tears of devotion;
Warmed by the sun of faith,
Through the fruit of days,
On the vine of humankind–
One and another,
All One Together…

—sam muller 14 April ’23
*

Michel is currenlty using a book by Pema Chödrön as the inspiration for his meditation journal. (I’m not sure which one, but it appears to be inspired by Chögyam Trungpa’s Training the Mind.)

March 9, 2023 #14 Seeing Confusion as the Four Kayas is Unsurpassable Shunyata Protection

Through meditation practice you begin to realize:

Thoughts just pop up out of nowhere—dharmakaya
Thoughts are never ceasing—sambhogakaya
They appear but are not solid—sambhogakaya
All together: no birth, no cessation, no dwelling—svabhavikakaya

This understanding gives unsurpassable protection of
realizing called shunyata—“complete openness.”
Nothing solid to react to.
You’ve made much ado about nothing!

I can relate to this one. The fancy names mean little, but the effort of meditation practice for complete openness is valuable—learning to not react to mental formations. Thoughts of mind are like mists or fog; the warm light of reality will dissipate all obstacles to reveal reality as it is. I’ve driven in misty, snowy, fog late at night and my vision played tricks on me, so I had to drive extra cautiously. During a clear day, the same road was easy to see and navigate. Mind plays the same tricks on me with reality; I need to slow down and pay careful attention—nothing changed except perception. Or did it? Surprises appear faster through foggy delusions. I can’t see them coming. Definitely: foggy, misty, delusions require proceeding cautiously until clearer.

March 13, 2023 #17 Practice the Four Strengths, the Condensed Heart Instrucions

Strong determination to train in opening heart and mind
Familiarization with practices helping you do this
Positive seed within, experienced as yearning to practice and wake up
Reproach, tricky for Western students, realizing ego-clinging causes suffering, delight in self-reflection, honesty, seeing where you get stuck
Aspiration to help alleviate suffering in this world, expressing that intention to yourself

I value each of these principles and judge they can be of benefit to any religious practice. I find, and imagine it is similar for many, that working with ego issues can be the most challenging of all, since our culture is all about cultivating a powerful ego. My experience reveals Western egoism is the central source of all our sufferings. It’s from here that we develop attractions (grasping) and aversions (pushing away), and this ego makes us blind to our faults and challenges which, once corrected, would release—at least diminish—suffering. Yet, we focus on and build up ego, wondering at our suffering. The “escape” is to practice breathing.

—Michel Deforge

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 4/9/23
2023-04-09 15:00 - 17:00
Beloved Bibliophiles!

For Sunday, April 9th, at 3 p.m. (PDT) our theme is:

“sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love”

Bring poems to read or recite about Spring!

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace & love
Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 4/6/23
2023-04-06 - 2023-05-03
The Rink

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

April 6, 2023

I invited some friends to write something about their favorite films…
When we read a great book, we want all our friends to read it. When we watch a great movie, we want all our friends to see it.
For the next issue of peace, love, happiness & understanding, which comes out on April 6th, write something about movies, films, or tv shows that you love.
*

Prabu’s film “In the Beginning” reminded me of the old, scratchy, haunting film “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” based on a civil war story by Ambrose Bierce. Much darker than what Prabu offered us, but a similar visual narrative of a man trying to negotiate a mysterious world.
https://vimeo.com/15147706

—Kim Stafford
*

At the top of my list is “Ted Lasso.” The improbable premise of this tv show is that the central character is nice. He’s generous to everyone. He has a corny sense of humor. He’s a good man. Whoever thought you could make stories about someone like that? The film that first came to mind is “Wings of Desire” by Wim Wenders. It’s about angels, who are invisible to most people, who help us to reduce stress and think positive thoughts by their presence. They are immortal, but they are missing out on many human pleasures, like the smell of coffee. Nancy and I love the films of Wes Anderson. Our favorite is “Moonrise Kingdom.” Of Coen brothers’ films, it’s a toss-up for me between “The Big Lebowski” and “Hail, Caesar!” I love the Australian film “Bliss” (1985), based on the novel by Peter Carey. Another classic is Terry Gilliam’s hilarious dystopian vision “Brazil” (also 1985!). I love the early silent films of Georges Méliès. “The Kingdom of the Fairies” (1903) is especially good. For physical comedy, Charlie Chaplin’s “The Rink” remains unsurpassed.

—Johnny Stallings
*

A favorite film of mine is, ‘The count of Monte Cristo’.
It embodies the tireless effort for justice, and a will to not give in to the deeds of those that seek ones demise.
The character, Edmond Dontez (later, the Count) is someone I could relate to while in captivity (prison). He spent 16 years seeking a way out, to avenge the wrongdoings of his peers.
He eventually did, and along the way, learned many other lessons about life and forgiveness.
Essentially for me, the story/film is an inspiration to never give up or give in. And to never forget where I came from, for it is fuel for my fire.

—Brandon Gillespie

Thanks for the invitation Johnny. A few ideas:

As for happiness, along with some heartbreak and comic flair, it’s hard to beat the book This Is Happiness by the Irish writer Niall Williams. I felt like I was living in a village in county Kerry the whole time I was reading the book. In the end I felt like I had made new friends, been wrapped in a prayer blanket, fed a good meal and sent home along a winding green path with a fiddle tune and a song. It made me hopeful, appreciative and aware of the happiness lurking in my own backyard. Superb writing!

As for film, “The Mission” (Robert Dinero) comes to mind not because of peace or happiness but because of understanding and the meaning of redemption and forgiveness. The music is sublime and the scenery stunningly beautiful. A sad reminder as well of what artistic and cultural creations might have been had peace, love, understanding and imagination prevailed over avarice and greed.

Opening day of baseball season always makes me happy. Here’s a poem I wrote about it. Love and Play Ball!!! Will

Why Baseball Matters

Because in a world obsessed with time, baseball is a past-time.
Because any game could theoretically last into eternity.
Because baseball is played on a diamond.
Because in a world obsessed by success even the best hitters fail two-thirds of the time.
Because, as George Carlin reminded us, football is about “ground and aerial attacks”, and “marching down the field” while baseball is about “staying safe and coming home.”
Because what other game has characters named “Goose, the Big Hurt, the Left Hand of God, the Splendid Splinter, The Say Hey Kid, the Sultan of Swat, Catfish, Hammerin’ Hank, Cool Papa, the Bird, Big Papi, The Man of Steal, Satchel, the Big Unit and the Iron Horse?”
Because the crowd takes a stretch and sings together at the ballpark.
Because despite all efforts to improve the game, baseball remains blessedly slow, wonderfully conversational, deceptively complex and enjoyably simple.
Because outside of going to the park, baseball is best experienced on a radio broadcast where gifted storytellers usher us daily into a theatre of imagination.
Because pitchers deliberately baffle, confuse and confound with “curves, sliders, splitters, sinkers, screwballs, knuckleballs, fastballs and change-ups.”
Because almost every day from April through October millions of boys and girls, women and men play a game made in America before the Civil War and now beloved from Japan and Korea to Cuba, Australia, Venezuela and beyond.
Because as Leo Durocher said: “Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.” Yet, I would add: all can be uplifted and enjoy.
Because as a Boston fan once said: “Baseball is not about life and death. But, the Red Sox are!”
Because these days it just feels good to shout: “Play ball!”

—Will Hornyak
*

For me, THE RULES OF THE GAME, by Jean Renoir, is a great humanist document that happens to be a movie rather than a novel or play….It is a luminous farce that depicts a weekend at a country estate. The classes, represented on the one hand by the owner and his guests, and on the other by members of the staff, especially a maid and a gamekeeper, are assiduously separated: one serves, the other receives. But at the same time, they all meet and merge as equals in games of love and deception. Renoir misses nothing, and forgives everything.
A more recent movie that moves me is THE RIDER, by Chloe Zhao, an almost-documentary that tells the story of some Pine Ridge “Indian cowboys”, who make brief and destructive livings as rodeo riders. The characters play themselves. I’ve watched this three times, and will watch it a fourth.
Oh, and also about RULES OF THE GAME; it’s funny as hell.

—Ken Margolis
*
What is it about peace that its story is not enduring?

Wings of Desire, a 1987 film directed by Wim Wenders

The aerial shots of Berlin so long before drones. The use of space both physically and visually. The plants in the library. The stand-up desks in the library. The angels in the library. The soft leather seats in the sports car in the showroom where the angels meet to compare notes. The desire for that car from the people looking in. The miracle of being able to watch this movie again in the kitchen 36 years later. The world of humans is in color. A friend and student expressing aversion to angels when I read a poem to a recent class that had a passing reference to them. The discussion that followed over days and walks about this dislike of angels she didn’t even know she had. The drawing on the wall at the circus behind the elephant. The robe on backwards to protect Marion’s chicken feather wings. Nick Cave on the portable phonograph. Looking for the right hat. The trapeze artist in a tuxedo cat suit with a long white tail. But the story of the grass, the sun, the leaping, and the shouting that is still going on as well. Sometimes beauty is the only thing that matters. Chest armor falling from the sky. The revelation and joy in color in a gray gray city. The mural of a ruined building on an intact one. The pile of sawdust the circus left behind. No one saw the carney go. The shared wine glass filled almost to the brim.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

This is a fun idea, Johnny.
I particularly like movies based on books. Even if I loved the book, I like watching how it was made into film. From the many Jane Austen’s to “Bridget Jone’s Diary,” in which Salmon Rushdie plays himself in a tiny part. The renditions of “A Room with a View” to “Little Dorrit.”
My favorite film, that stands up over 50 years, is “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison,” directed by John Huston. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, a marine and a nun, are stranded on a Japanese-invaded island during WWII.
Bill likes old and new foreign films—Iranian, Japanese, French, Irish, Indian, the farther flung the better. Our favorite series ever is “Heimat”–that begins at the end of WWI with a family living above their cow in a small village, up through that family’s youngest living amongst his creative fellow artists in the city in the 50’s. Rotten tomato reviewer writes about it: “Edgar Reitz’s Heimat is not just a brilliant film about Germany. It is a brilliant film about our time, anywhere—perhaps about any time anywhere.
I’m excited to see everyone’s reviews!

—Katie Radditz
*

I want movies to move me.
Two films, totally opposite from one another on the surface, would be my faves of all time. The Crying Game and The Lives of Others are both about love, courage and compassion.
My short take on The Crying Game is that Love Conquers all; love remains love, in spite of its being turned on its head in a very unexpected way.
The Lives of Others, a German film, takes place in 1984, 5 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Stasi, the German version of the Nazi SS, is in operation, and Captain Gerd Wiesler is assigned the job of spying on a couple suspected of national dissident activity. The Captain is dry, hardened, methodical and dispassionate in his work (as he has been his whole life). However, as time goes on, he begins to care for his subjects (to his own puzzlement and fear).
Ultimately, love and compassion conquer, and he does the right thing, makes the difficult, moral choice, to his own great peril. I love this.
Others have different viewpoints of both these movies; this is what makes them both compelling, and grand.
—Jude Russell
*

A Smile in Abjection
notes on the opening credits of Withnail and I

My favorite frame in cinema is this one: Paul McGann as Marwood, the “I” in Withnail and I, just one minute into the film. We have drawn closer and closer to him as he smokes a cigarette that clearly brings no pleasure, his eyes shifting and shifting and finding no solace. And as the saxophone of King Curtis carries us gently through a live cut of “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” Marwood appears to reach some far limit within himself, and his torment suddenly eases, or it pauses to breathe, or Marwood simply parts it like a blackout curtain. He lifts his eyes, and we perceive a smile that is almost not even there. Perhaps we have just imagined it. Perhaps Marwood himself has imagined it.

Can you see it? I can. It is the mark of a wild, mad hope. I am certain it is there, the smile, because I have been there, and I have smiled it. It is an abject smile, a desolate smile, a smile with sweat on its forehead. Undramatically, I tell you that it is no less than the smile you face death with. I have been hunted by forces within me and without, cornered and shivering in a sweater, smoking far beyond any desire to continue smoking. And yet I would also, in those midnights, hallucinate some star, some aberration of logic in which I could discern a reason to hope. Marwood is looking upon that star, smiling upon it, and I, too, have seen it.

—Alex Tretbar
*

Andrei Rublev:
Andrei Rublev is a biographical film about a medieval Russian iconic painter. In the movie you can hardly see Rublev touching the brush. It is a movie about the formation of Rublev as an artist, especially an artist living under an oppressive regime. It effectively shows that an artist is society’s conscience.

Tree of Life:
Terrance Malicks poetic masterpiece that attempts to capture all of existence through the lens of a boy growing up in the American midlands. As per the great film critic Roger Ebert “the only other film with this boldness of vision is Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it lacked Malick’s fierce evocation of human feeling.”

—Prabu Muruganantham
*

Dear Reader
For next month (May 4th), send me something about books that changed the way you see, experience, or understand the world.

peace, love, happiness & understanding
—Johnny

World Premiere of "In the Beginning": a film by Prabu Muruganantham
2023-03-26 14:00 - 16:00
“In the Beginning” is a 24 minute narrative short fiction that tells the story of a young man of color–newly released from prison–who returns to society with the hope of beginning a new life. He discovers on his solitary journey that the world sees him only as his crime.

Premiere Details:

When: March 26, 2023 at 2PM
Where: The Hollywood Theatre
Tickets and Trailer: Click here

The topic of the film is close to our hearts—some of the actors in this film have experienced incarceration in Oregon prisons themselves. The film screening will be followed by an artist-audience panel Q&A on the film and the challenges of post-prison life.

Proceeds will go to Open Hearts Open Minds, an Oregon-based non-profit organization that supports individuals serving prison sentences through arts and dialogue.

Looking forward to seeing you at the screening!

~Prabu

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 3/15/23
2023-03-15 - 2023-04-15
photo by Kim Stafford

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

March 15, 2023

Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.

—from Ulysses by James Joyce, p. 340
*

All truths wait in all things.

—from “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman
*

#344 To Cherish Your Beloved

“When we know that the person we love is impermanent, we will cherish our beloved all the more. Impermanence teaches us to respect and value every moment and all the precious things around us. When we practice mindfulness of impermanence, we become fresher and more loving.”
–from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh

It can be mighty hard to be constantly aware of our beloved’s impermanence—or of our own impermanence, and to be endlessly fresher and more loving. That can be exhausting, to be honest.

Another way to be reminded of cherishing your loved one is to have someone close to you die swiftly and unexpectedly. This is happening right now, in this moment. Kim is my dear friend, and her husband, who is/was my dear friend, too, just died two days ago. He collapsed at home while Kim and I were walking on the waterfront and having coffee in Hood River, as we do once a week or more. She returned home, intending to run errands with John and found him on the floor, unresponsive, unconscious. 911, Skyline Hospital, Emanuel Hospital in Portland, where doctors found a blood clot which had traveled to his brain from the left ventricle, causing multiple, massive strokes. And John is gone. How does one express shock and disbelief and utter grief… So here it is: Impermanence at work.

My heart and soul are with her right now. I love her and want to hold her close. But the one I also really want to hold close is my husband. I am instantly drawn to cherish him and all we have together, all we have had for 39 years together. He is in Arizona right now, and I will fly down next week. I call him and tell him I love him dearly, and thank him for the life we have together. I tell him I miss him and can’t wait to hold him and be held.

I am aware that this is how I always want to be with him, this expressive and caring and loving, and maybe, just maybe, I will be able to cherish my beloved due to the impermanence (and sacrifice) of another.

—Jude Russell
*

Small Offering

This evening I would be the emperor of delay
if I could order the small bird with bluish
plumage to drop his fish and look up
to see violet angels weave a tapestry
of dreams with the four evening elements.

Here at Sunset Point, the overlook
is high enough that mist hovers
in patches. Sunlight sweeps from above
highlighting the solid wall of mountains.
The bird dives again, silver flash in his beak.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

DHARMA

Six months after I turned seventy I moved into an ashram where I would reside for the next 9 1⁄2 years (2012-2021) of my life. I’d been assisting in the care of my mother for two years, and when she passed on, one week after her 96th birthday, I was in a state of ambivalence as to why I had no feeling of grief, or even the slightest indication of sadness. How could this be? I was her only son, and had dutifully been there for Her in these past years– cooking for her, reading to her, rubbing her swollen legs, heavy with edema; escorting her on shopping trips and pleasant drives through the golden wheat fields of her childhood in North Central Oregon. Was I experiencing a kind of release from a period of time that had kept me so preoccupied that my own needs for self-examination and intellectual stimulation were suffocating?

I had spent two years in England (1983-85) studying the metaphysical philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, but had not yet arrived at that internal place of a disciplined practice in study and meditation—of simplifying the material circumstances of my daily life; of coming to grasp the ego-transcendent state of the Eternal Self. And so when I was offered a room in the Portland ashram of the Sarada Ramakrishna Vivekananda order at the behest of the guru, Robert Kindler, I decided that a quiet and spiritually dedicated environment might inspire and deepen self-reflection. I might add that I had had the benefit of seven years of coming to know and respect the depth of the guru’s knowledge of the sacred texts of ancient India—the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and the Puranas, as well as the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (most recent avatar of West Bengal (b. 1836-’86)—through frequent classes and retreats. And I was further inspired by his remarkable facility in speaking the ancient Sanskrit slokas (passages from scripture), as well as his gift of musicianship, having been a professional orchestral cellist with abilities to compose and perform hymns of praise offered to the deities of the Hindu spiritual tradition.

I took a small 12’ x 12’ room, and began an exploration of ashram regimen—sharing a simple and contemplative daily schedule of 6am/10pm meditation, vegetarian diet, weekly classes of scriptural study, and shared maintenance and cooking chores amongst the four of us—two men and two women—co-habitants upon the dharmic path. The intent was to “still” the restless mind to enable a depth of self-perception whereby the ephemerality/impermanence of day-to-day “reality” (regarded as Maya—the veil covering the eternal truths of aparanama (free of change) and ajativada (birthless/deathless)), could be grasped, and the elevated state of consciousness attained by the sages, seers, siddhis, yogis and saviors could be glimpsed.

My 9 1⁄2 years, grounded in a consistent daily meditation practice, and an inquisitive research into the philosophical richness of the sacred texts of India, as well as the offering of my service/work in maintaining the grounds and shrines, and serving as “the Abbot of the Ashram, has deepened my self- perception and brought me to a place of self-trust and contentment at a depth that I have never before experienced. And I am inspired to proffer this brief koan-like offering from my experiential Realizations (aparokshanubhuti)

THE YOGI SITS IN THE CAVE OF THE HEART,
ONE EYE OPEN

—Sam A. Muller
*

God Praying

Sometimes we are discouraged from praying,
we lose faith in the possibility of prayer,
everything seems blocked.
We have no trust in words,
in ourselves,
we feel exiled, distant.
There is no one to awaken compassion for us.
From within our despair
we can reveal a new opening,
a surprising one,
and ask God to pray for us,
to give words to our inner scream,
to have compassion on us in our exile.

—Rabbi Singer

This idea melts my mind. I thought it was to God I’ve been praying, and now Rabbi Singer (and others) suggest I now ask God to pray for me—to whom, though? To ask the Self-Existent One to peer into my deepest recesses, where I’m oft too scared to look, and express, for me, my deepest heart’s desires. It seems both ludicrous and sensible all at the same time. Can I just sit here with my self—all inclusive—and allow those hidden away hopes, dreams, feelings, memories, etc., to just percolate up for Divine consideration or attention. Truth is, God should already “know” these things—all knowing and all—which means I need only sit with and accept these pesky demons (self-made?) as part of my experience.

—Michel Deforge, February 4, 2023
*

Alex Tretbar sent this poem by Jessica Jacobs:

Godwrestling

The river has tasted the salt of your skin, has lapped
at your calves with its current. The river has swallowed

the press of your steps. There is no record of your crossing.
The river is between you and everything you call your life.

So you step into a stranger’s arms. Your shoulder fits
theirs like a bone in its socket. Your jaw notches theirs.

All around you, a profusion of oleanders beams
back the moonlight, offering a carpet of fallen petals.

In your arms, all the promises you’ve yet to keep, all
you’ve done that shames you. But what is wrestling

if not an embrace? It’s too dark to know
you have the same face and only like this, cheek to cheek,

each looking over the other’s shoulder, can you see
the world whole. Close, at first, as a slow dance,

you spin and spin, your tracks a tight coin; matched,
you step out, making a spear tip of your bodies; matched,

you step further, levered like rafters, needing the other
to stay aloft—your tracks trace widening circles, ringing

out through the fallen blossoms. Names are required
only when not alone. This stranger

does not give you a new name, just dippers up
the true one you tender in your chest. The day is breaking

the night’s hold. The far bank is calling.
On one side, you. On the other, your life. Join them.

—Jessica Jacobs
*

Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.

–from Ulysses by James Joyce, p. 340

Here’s what Joseph Campbell has to say about this passage from Ulysses:

“I mentioned this basic theme before with respect to the esthetic experience: Any object can open back to the mystery of the universe. You can take any object whatsoever—a stick or stone, a dog or a child—draw a ring around it so that it is seen as separate from everything else, and thus contemplate it in its mystery aspect—the aspect of the mystery of its being, which is the mystery of all being—and it will have there and then become a proper object of worshipful regard. So, any object can become an adequate base for meditation, since the whole mystery of man and of nature and of everything else is in any object that you want to regard. This idea, the anagogical inspiration of Joyce’s art, is what we are getting in this little moment.”

—from Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce by Joseph Campbell, p. 130

Here’s one of my small poems that seems à propos:

a bowl of oatmeal
and a cup of coffee
did you think heaven was up in the sky somewhere?

—Johnny Stallings
*

More of my thoughts on LovingKindness meditation:

Before beginning Loving Kindness meditation practice each Monday, I center myself remembering my friend and teacher Bob Schaibly. His teaching mantra was, “What the World Needs from Us is our Non-Anxious Presence.” Reciting and listening to the Loving Kindness phrases these past couple of years, I have come to understand that this is what we are training ourselves to do. To find equanimity and to be able in the midst of changes—good or bad—to find stability in equanimity. This doesn’t mean being passive or uncaring, but to have courage, to not let our emotions make us frantic, to not react immediately with judgement. In this way we can stay present to whatever might arise. We can observe and check our fears and anger and deep sadness without causing harm to ourselves and others, without blocking our feelings.

Compassion in Sanskrit means being present—with yourself or with another. I have two stories that came to my mind about acts of kindness on a small scale that are examples of compassion in action. When I had a bookstore in downtown Portland, one day two people I hardly knew, came in and presented me with a rose. Just to say thank you for having the bookstore where they always felt happy to browse and meet up. I was stunned. They said they liked to go places that make them feel happy and take a flower or two. I also heard a story last week about a woman who wished she could do something for her sick uncle who lived far away. She sent him a bouquet of flowers. He called her and said that in his long life, no one had ever sent him flowers and he was so thankful.

Thich Nhat Hanh says it takes mindfulness training with loving kindness to bring compassion. He writes:

“Loving kindness should be practiced every day. Suppose you have a transistor radio. To tune into the radio station you like, you need a battery. In order to get linked to the power of loving kindness of bodhisattvas, buddhas, and other great beings, you need to tune in to the “station” of loving kindness that is being sent from the ten directions. Then you only need to sit on the grass and practice breathing and enjoying.

But many of us are not capable of doing that because the feeling of loneliness, of being cut off from the world, is so severe we cannot reach out. We do not realize that if we are moved by the imminent death of an insect, if we see an insect suffering and we do something to help, already this energy of loving kindness is in us. If we take a small stick and help the insect out of the water, we can also reach out to the cosmos. The energy of loving kindness in us becomes real, and we derive a lot of joy from it.

The Fourth Precept of the Order of Interbeing tells us to be aware of suffering in the world, not to close our eyes before suffering. Touching those who suffer is one way to generate the energy of compassion in us, and compassion will bring joy and peace to ourselves and others. The more we generate the energy of loving kindness in ourselves, the more we are able to receive the joy, peace, and love of the buddhas and bodhisattvas throughout the cosmos.”

Last Sunday, I heard a story about an acrobat flying from one trapeze bar to the next. It was a story about letting go of how things have been in the past in order to break free and into some new engagement. Even though we might not know what that will be. In Buddhism, the term for this refreshing process is “renunciation.” Rather than giving up things it is about what we practice in LovingKindness: becoming aware of where we might feel an aversion—a fear, a grudge, anxiety, resentment—by recognizing it, then softening our hearts, we can let these negative emotions have less power over us. Through that we find more equanimity and ability to act with compassion, with ourselves and for others. With that foremost in our minds, we can become unstuck and as Bob encouraged us, to participate fully in the midst of life’s difficulties with a non-anxious presence.

in love and peace,

—Katie Radditz

Bibliophiles Unanimous!: Memorize a Poem!
2023-03-12 15:00 - 17:00
Beloved Bibliophiles!

For Sunday, March 12th, at 3 p.m. (PST): MEMORIZE A POEM! Do you know any poems by heart? Did you used to know some poems that have gotten rusty? Is there a poem that you would like to learn and be able to recite? This is your chance!
Bring a poem or poems that you would like to share. (Extra points if you know the poem by heart.)
Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace & love
Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 3/2/23
2023-03-02 - 2023-04-05
photograph by Kim Stafford

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

March 2, 2023

I invited some friends to…
…please send me one of your favorite poems and say a little bit about why you like it. Here’s what people sent:

Vernal Sentiment

Though the crocuses poke up their heads in the usual places,
The frog scum appear on the pond with the same froth of green,
And boys moon at girls with last year’s fatuous faces,
I never am bored, however familiar the scene.

When from under the barn the cat brings a similar litter,—
Two yellow and black, and one that looks in between,—
Though it all happened before, I cannot grow bitter:
I rejoice in the spring, as though no spring ever had been.

—Theodore Roethke

I think why I am so fond of this poem and tend to read it every spring, often many times, is that it captures perfectly my delight and joy as the subtle and sometimes not so subtle signs of spring emerge. And yes, “I (truly) rejoice in the spring, as though no spring ever had been.” This short poem seems almost perfect to me and brings me joy just as witnessing the first signs of the pussy willows, the first call of the returning robins, the glorious scent of daphne wafting over the damp air, enlivens me and gets my pulse slightly elevated. Roethke masterfully captures the delight that is so available in the ordinary!!. I believe that we all need to pay more attention to these ordinary miracles that reveal themselves if we pay attention.

Cheers my friend!

—Jeffrey Sher
*

After an Illness, Walking the Dog

Wet things smell stronger,
and I suppose his main regret is that
he can sniff just one at a time.
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

When I whistle he halts abruptly
and steps in a circle,
swings his extravagant tail.
The he rolls and rubs his muzzle
in a particular place, while the drizzle
falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace
and Goldenrod bend low.

The top of the logging road stands open
and light. Another day, before
hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,
leaving word first at home.
The footing is ambiguous.

Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,
panting, and looks up with what amounts
to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,
nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

A sound commences in my left ear
like the sound of the sea in a shell;
a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—

imagines to the end that he is free.

—Jane Kenyon

I like the designated optimist and think of him or her often.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

My favorite poems….of the moment!
And I’m cheating a bit as I am sending in two short ones, from two extremely different writers and I list the books they are from as the books are quite spectacular.

First:
Untitled. From Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo. Really the entire book is an intact work but here is a current favorite small poem. Harjo is Creek/Muskogee, writes intimately from within a native community, is a former US Poet Laureate and a jazz saxophonist.

I thought of all the doors that had opened and closed.
I thought of how so many I loved were no longer on
This earth. I thought of all my mother’s songs looking
For a place to live. I thought of all the Saturdays in the
World. I started with G and rounded the bend at B-flat.
I followed my soul.

—Joy Harjo

Second:
“A Meadow” from Facing the River by Czeslaw Milosz. Again the book is really a unit, written after returning to his native village after being in exile for fifty years. He grew up in then-Lithuania, now Poland, survived the Nazi invasion, the Soviet invasion and then Occupation. He first served with the Communist government but soon left. He won the Nobel prize for Literature.

It was a riverside meadow, lush, from before the hay harvest,
On an immaculate day in the sun of June.
I searched for it, found it, recognized it.
Grasses and flowers grew there familiar in my childhood.
With half-closed eyelids I absorbed luminescence.
And the scent garnered me, all knowing ceased.
Suddenly I felt I was disappearing and weeping with joy.

—Czeslaw Milosz

—Deborah Buchanan
*

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

—Theodore Roethke

Hands down my favorite poem. Every morning when I wake up, I try to not be in a rush, or have a plan, but let life take me slowly into the day, and learn from where it takes me.

—Dave Duncan
*

Here’s my submission to your beautiful request, and I will say it might not be my “favorite” poem but it is an artifact in my younger life when I somehow imparted the power of poetry to my two now grown daughters.

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

—William Butler Yeats

—Mark Danley
*

My favorite poem has often been one by T’ao Ch’ien (365-427 A.D. ), translated by David Hinton. Here is this one:

Together, We all go out Under the Cypress Trees in the Chou Family Burial-Grounds

Today’s skies are perfect for a clear
flute and singing koto. And touched
this deeply by those laid under these
cypress trees, how could we neglect joy?
Clear songs drift away anew. Emerald wine
starts pious faces smiling. No knowing
what tomorrow brings, it’s exquisite
exhausting whatever i feel here and now.

—T’ao Ch’ien

I feel T’ao Ch’ien as present as my Great Aunt Emma, who knew much deprivation but was so joyful that we would arrive for a visit to the Farm. We would sit out in the grass looking for four leaf clovers for hours, and she would bake us blackberry pies.

I like to write back to T’ao Ch’ien—over many years now. He has inspired me to stop, be in the wild, appreciate the moment as beauty at the same time, feeling all that’s been lost and is gone. And he led me to the Buddhist sutras!!

I also love to find another poet respond to him, like Billy Collins does, below. Though it may not be for T’ao Ch’ien himself, it’s across time and distance, enchanted still in the twentieth century by what they wrote in the the fifth.

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of their Titles

It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

“Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon” is one of Sun Tung Po’s.
“Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea”
is another one, or just
“On a Boat, Awake at Night.”

And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
“In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem.”

There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like “Vortex on a String,”
“The Horn of Neurosis,” or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, “I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall”
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And “Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors”
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.

—Billy Collins

—Katie Radditz
*

May I never be complete
May I never be content
May I never be perfect

From Fight Club! I remember reading that over 10 years ago and being inspired by the hidden beauty of a concept like willing ones self to never want completeness… I’m going to always be learning growing struggling to figure out what the hell I am on this Giant beautiful rock… It’s not easy to accept flaws… growing… Being content as in settled in, not striving to learn… it’s a beautiful sentiment… That’s my fav poem… That I’ll prolly get tattooed someday.

—Jeff Kuehner
*

Max Ritvo is one of my favorite poets, and “Afternoon” is my favorite poem by him. He died young, of cancer, and he produced a great deal of work during his final years, while he was very sick. I find much to admire in this poem, but perhaps what stays with me the most, and will always stay with me, is the fountain. I won’t spoil it. Just read the poem and see for yourself.

Afternoon

When I was about to die
my body lit up
like when I leave my house
without my wallet.

What am I missing? I ask
patting my chest
pocket.
and I am missing everything living
that won’t come with me
into this sunny afternoon

—my body lights up for life
like all the wishes being granted in a fountain
at the same instant—
all the coins burning the fountain dry—

and I give my breath
to a small bird-shaped pipe.

In the distance, behind several voices
haggling, I hear a sound like heads
clicking together. Like a game of pool,

played with people by machines.

—Max Ritvo

—Alex Tretbar
*

Valentine

On the eve of the apocalypse,
the wild turkeys are tuning up for their dance, flared
stately stepping upon the new fallen snow
I continue to ponder

Ruby Crowned Kinglet.
He is fixed in my mind because
unknown to him,
set upon a background of olive green feathers
embering with gold and
floating above his brain there glows
a fire ruby jewel.

Like the mandalas radiating from ancient bodhisattvas,
the feathered crown of hunter gatherer peoples, branched trees on
the halos of saints, the heads of shamans
that they say all together,
look how I see you.
See how you look through my open heart.

—Ken Hunt

Ken Hunt is an artist, saddle-maker, horse-trainer living in a remote canyon in NE Oregon, and he has a vibrant sense of his place and the creatures there. He lives close to all kinds of wild beings, and in this poem brings them close to us, so close they can see through our eyes and hearts.

—Kim Stafford
*

Deb thought another poem would not go amiss, so she invited me to join your party this once.

Among lots of favorite poems, Frost’s “Mending Wall” has grown in depth to me for my whole life. Frost’s simple example demonstrates how we sabotage unity by drawing thick lines between groups and positions, and then fighting over them. The poem details how we carefully resurrect these divisions, where they aren’t needed. The conflict is merely hinted at.

Once, after I had written about the poem in my weekly blog, a friend told me that the PM of Israel, don’t recall which, had recently cited the poem to justify their apartheid: “good fences make good neighbors.” Of course, this is the antithesis of the poem, but how many tumultuous patriots would have known this? On behalf of Frost’s dignity and immense compassion, I humbly offer perhaps his greatest poem, though it does have competitors in his oeuvre.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

—Robert Frost

—Scott Teitsworth
*

That Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is my all-time favorite poem is a well-known fact (among my friends), but I have many favorite poems. In the not-too-distant past (five years ago, maybe?) I had the great good fortune to come upon the writings of Thomas Traherne (1637-1674). His poems and meditations were first published in 1903, ten years after they were rediscovered in manuscript—229 years after his death. I often start the day by reading a poem and/or a meditation by him. His wild delight is contagious. He helps me to get the day off to a glorious start. The first four poems in The Collected Works of Thomas Traherne are all sublime: “The Salutation,” “Wonder,” “Eden,” and “Innocence.” Here’s the first:

The Salutation

These little limbs,
These eyes and hands which here I find,
These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins,
Where have ye been? behind
What curtain were ye from me hid so long?
Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue?

When silent I
So many thousand, thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie,
How could I smiles or tears,
Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive?
Welcome ye treasures which I now receive.

I that so long
Was nothing from eternity,
Did little think such joys as ear or tongue
To celebrate or see:
Such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet,
Beneath the skies on such a ground to meet.

New burnished joys,
Which yellow gold and pearls excel!
Such sacred treasures are the limbs in boys,
In which a soul doth dwell;
Their organised joints and azure veins
More wealth include than all the world contains.

From dust I rise,
And out of nothing now awake;
These brighter regions which salute mine eyes,
A gift from God I take.
The earth, the seas, the light, the day, the skies,
The sun and stars are mine, if those I prize.

Long time before
I in my mother’s womb was born,
A God preparing did this glorious store
The world for me adorn.
Into this Eden so divine and fair,
So wide and bright, I come His son and heir.

A stranger here
Strange things doth meet, strange glories see;
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear,
Strange all and new to me;
But that they mine should be, who nothing was,
That strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

—Thomas Traherne

—Johnny Stallings
*

I Corinthians, Chapter 13, which ends:

Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tonguers, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part: but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

—Ken Margolis

Bibliophiles Unanimous! Snowed In!
2023-02-26 15:00 - 17:00
Beloved Bibliophiles!

On Sunday, January 26th, at 3 p.m. (PST) our theme will be: SNOWED IN! What are you reading? What’s a good book to read when you’ve got a lot of time on your hands? When you’re snowed in? What are your favorite (fat?) books of all time?
Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

peace & love
Johnny

A Midsummer Night's Dream in Prison Goes to Santa Fe!
2023-02-19 16:00 - 18:00
GREAT NEWS!!!
A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison will be shown at the Santa Fe Film Festival on February 19th, at 4 p.m. The festival runs from February 17-26, 2023. You can get tickets from the festival website: http://santafefilmfestival.com/index/festivals/2023-santa-fe-film-festival/
Actors William Foote and Allen Mills will be in attendance, along with the play’s director, Johnny Stallings.

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 2/15/23
2023-02-15 - 2023-03-14
Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

February 15, 2023

Jason Beito sent this poem:

Cloud

Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and
murmuring like a mouth. You were the shadow of a cloud
crossing over a field of tulips. You were the tears of a
man who cried into a plaid handkerchief. You were a sky
without a hat. Your heart puffed and flowered like sheets
drying on a line.

And when you were a tree, you listened to trees and the tree
things trees told you. You were the wind in the wheels of a
red bicycle. You were the spidery Maria tattooed on the
hairless arm of a boy in downtown Houston. You were the
rain rolling off the waxy leaves of a magnolia tree. A lock
of straw-colored hair wedged between the mottled pages of a
Victor Hugo novel. A crescent of soap. A spider the color
of a finger nail. The black nets beneath the sea of olive
trees. A skein of blue wool. A tea saucer wrapped in
newspaper. An empty cracker tin. A bowl of blueberries in
heavy cream. White wine in a green-stemmed glass.

And when you opened your wings to wind, across the
punched-tin sky above a prison courtyard, those condemned to
death and those condemned to life watched how smooth and
sweet a white cloud glides.

—Sandra Cisneros
*

Jinx

Trees spread their arms, birds open
their wings, rain falls on everyone,
and the wind brings breath to all.

When I’m lucky, do I mother my luck,
knowing how fragile fortune can be?
Am I generous and kind, letting luck
brim and flow, spill and splash to wash
everything I touch, everyone lucky enough
to stumble into this circle of light?

Or might I forget how happiness shuns
a place of no love, where luck leaks
from a fist clenched to keep it?

—Kim Stafford
*

Now I close my eyes,
and somewhere a butterfly
contemplates cocoon.

—Alex Tretbar
*

It’s Valentine’s Day. Love Day. I don’t know what love is, or where it comes from. It’s a Mystery! Wouldn’t it be lovely if everyone lived in love—if we all loved each other, and loved all the animals and plants and rivers and clouds and stones? Let’s try it and see what happens!

William Blake says:

Love to faults is always blind,
Always is to joy inclin’d,
Lawless, wing’d & unconfin’d,
And breaks all chains from every mind

—Johnny Stallings
*
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Loving Kindness Meditation goes hand in hand with Mindfulness says Thich Nhat Hanh.
Here is a link to Thay giving a rare Metta meditation for LovingKindness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5luvQp–B8U
Is there a difference between being nice and being kind? After practicing LovingKindness meditation I’ve been feeling a pull to agree, to say yes, to be more present,.. Kindness itself is a practice that can make us become and feel more engaged – with others, in causes, and in our own true self as well. This feels like what it means to have meaning in our life.
“Just being nice will not be enough to save civility in today’s world. It will take the patience and focus of true and loving-kindness.” writes Donna Cameron. She has a book about her year of consciously Living Kindly. She continues:
“Kindness is how you see the world, and you be kind because it needs to be done. On the other hand, . . . You can remain distant and still be nice, but that’s not the case with kindness.
Kindness doesn’t mean becoming saintly!
No, we all are humans, and all of us tend to falter now and then. Just because you get angry and upset doesn’t mean you cannot or should not practice being kind.
Health benefits of kindness
Kindness has a major effect on our emotional, mental, and physical health. Studies have shown that kindness raises serotonin and oxytocin levels in our bodies, and these chemicals make us happier. This surge isn’t permanent, hence you have to keep practicing kind acts to keep the level up. These chemicals also help in reducing blood pressure and inflammation.
Not only that, kindness eases our relationships therefore drastically reducing our stress levels. Interestingly, witnessing a kind act also has the same impact on our body as performing a kind act does. Each act of kindness establishes neural pathways, therefore it becomes easier and more natural over time.”
Invitation: Think of a time you received a kindness, something small that may have changed you, or that you often think of even though you may have been young.
Or join a Monday night LovingKindness meditation with me and others. Here’s a link if you would like to sign in. It is free, every Monday 8-8:30 p.m. Drop in.
https://www.firstunitarianportland.org/events/lovingkindnessmeditation/
A metta practice for you: Thich Nhat Hanh says there is value in practicing Metta even 5 minutes a day.

May I be at peace.
May my heart remain open.
May I awaken to the light of my own true nature.
May I be healed.
May I be a source of healing for all beings.

Continue with loved ones – You, We, then one you may have a conflict with, then with the whole world.
May we know Peace. May we know love.

“Only your compassion and your loving kindness are invincible, and without limit.” “Smile, breathe and go slowly.” – Thay

— Katie Radditz

Katie also sent this poem by Juan Felipe Herrera:

Song Out Here

if i could sing
i’d say everything you know
from here on the street can you turn around
just for once i am here
right behind you
what is that flag what is it made of
maybe it’s too late i have
too many questions where did it all come from
what colors is it all made of everything
everything here in the subways
there are so many things and voices
we are going somewhere but i just don’t know
somewhere
but i just don’t know
somewhere
do you know where that is i want to sing
so you can hear me and maybe you can tell me
where to go so you can hear me and just maybe
you can tell me where to go
all those hands and legs and faces going places
if i could sing
you would hear me and i would tell you
it’s gonna be alright
it’s gonna be alright
it’s gonna be alright it would be something like that
can you turn around so i can look into your eyes
just for once your eyes
maybe like hers can you see her
and his can you see them i want you to see them
all of us we could be together
if i could sing we would go there
we would run there together
we would live there for a while in that tilted
tiny house by the ocean rising up inside of us
i am on the curb next to a curled up cat
smoking i know its bad for you but
you know how it is just for once can you turn around
a straight line falling behind you it’s me i want to sing
invincible bleeding out with love

just for you

— Juan Felipe Herrera
*

I keep what is sacred to me
safe in the heart of the sun.
The path is a maze of stairs
made for the ones I love.
All are welcome & if you’re
able all can come.
Just being yourself as
you were always meant to be.
Everyone is welcomed and
all are accepted by me.

—Rocky Hutchinson
*

The Pause

When I read a poem in the mornings
to the people in boxes on the screen,
dear people, beloved all,
they settle, they listen
and when I am done
they don’t look at each other,
or at me.

They look up.

Many times, depending of course
on the poem, there will be a half smile.

The threads the words weave
are a nest for us to rest in together
to ponder, wonder, absorb.

There is a pause.

We chat then briefly,
sometimes seriously,
sometimes frivolously,
about an image,
a confusion,
or something else entirely.

We learn about each other.

Then we disperse out into the day,
separate, yet connected by the resonant
imprint of a shared moment of apprehending
something we hadn’t thought of ourselves.

—Elizabeth Domike

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 2/12/23
2023-02-12 15:00 - 17:00
Abelard and Heloise Surprised by the Abbot Fulbert by Jean Vignaud (1819)

Beloved Bibliophiles!
On Sunday, January 12th, at 3 p.m. (PST) for our Valentine’s Day Special the theme will be: “What have you learned about love from books and plays and poems?”
Bring favorite love poems to read.
Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

peace, love & poetry
Johnny

Link to the 2021 Valentines issue of “peace, love, happiness & understanding”:

peace, love, happiness & understanding 2/18/21

Link to poems from the 2021 Bibliophiles Unanimous Valentine’s Day Special:

Bibliophiles Unanimous! Valentine’s Day Special: LOVE POEMS

Screening of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Prison on February 6th!
2023-02-06 18:00 - 20:00
There will be a screening of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center on Monday, February 6th, at 6 p.m. The address is: 6651 SW Capitol Highway, Portland, OR 97219. For people in the Portland area who haven’t seen the film yet (or who would like to see it again), this is a great opportunity!
Actors from the play will be there for a conversation afterwards–Josh Underhill, Allen Mills, William Foote & Aaron O’Hara.

peace, love, happiness & understanding 2/2/23
2023-02-02 - 2023-03-01
poster by Rick Bartow

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

February 2, 2023

I invited some friends to…
…send me a short work in prose or poetry about an experience, a person, a conversation, a book, or an inspiration that changed the way you see, experience or understand yourself and/or the world. Here’s what people sent:

In Memory of
My Literary Godmother

Her name was
Miriam Soomil
Of Russian-Jewish descent
And the editor of
The Belmont Courier-Bulletin
A small-town
Weekly newspaper
Where I interned
One summer.

She smoked
Pall Malls
Drank black coffee
Devoured the
San Francisco Chronicle
Loved politics
Had opinions
Quoted Keats
Knew history
Adored anything
Well-written.

I’d never
Met anyone
Like her.
She was
Gritty, smart
Funny, flawed
Big-hearted
And tough
Like a
Thick slice
Of dark rye
In my
White bread
Ozzie and Harriet
World.

We shared
An office
Pounded out
News stories
On massive
Underwood typewriters
Edited copy
With pencils
Cut and pasted
With scissors
And glue pots
Beat deadlines
Logged
Late nights
At the printer.

She didn’t
So much
Teach me
As infect me
With language
The names
Of poets
Writers, books
Ideas
And
A care
Uncompromising
For words.

We became friends
And remained so
For years after.
I visited her
In the cabin
Where she lived
In a grove
Of Oak trees
Behind Stanford University
(Erased by bulldozers
Decades ago.)
Her walls
Lined with books
Her home patrolled
By an enormous
Siamese cat
Her garden
Thick with basil
Tomatoes, rosemary.
When I became
A working reporter
I sent her clippings.

Sometimes
I drink
Red jug wine
Like I used to
With Miriam
And raise
A toast
To her
A Mensch
Of this world
Generous
Beyond measure
Indelibly imprinted
Upon
My own
Soul’s page.

In whatever
Language you
Now speak
Dear friend
May you know
The eloquence
And intelligence
You bestowed
Upon us all.

—Will Hornyak January 2023
*

Coincidence

For years I tried right place, wrong time,
then right time, but I was somewhere else
plodding a dark street wondering where
my luck had gone. What are the odds
for happiness? Could I help chance,
assist coincidence, gamble with verve?

The first bird of dawn began to sing
and I woke to see life on Earth as one
big coincidence, this swirl of stone, water,
cell, sun, and in good time all the rest—
and suddenly, there you were
telling me your name.

—Kim Stafford
*

A long time ago when I was visiting Johnny in Portland, he got a phone call from our friend Sam.
He was dying of cancer—finally—after ten years or more of fighting it, and he invited us down to Houston to attend his passing.
In those days it was easy to travel by air. We just went to the airport, bought tickets, and flew down to Houston.
In his last years, after an adventurous checkered business career, Sam had reinvented himself as an academic.
After a few years, he left Berkeley and got a job in a Texas border town, teaching social science in a small community college. The students were all Latin American—second generation children of Mexican immigrants—newly citizened Americans hoping to realize the American Dream.
Sam was a man of the world. He gave his students, not the usual politically correct canned curriculum, but his best practical wisdom—like an uncle—speaking what usually remains unsaid about what it takes to get by, to get ahead, to simply survive, in racist America.
His students adored him.
Sam met Johnny and me in the waiting room of the cancer ward, and made us feel at home.
It was a Friday evening. The head hospice nurse was a friend of Sam’s.
She said she was taking the weekend off to deal with family.
“This is goodbye, Sam. We won’t be seeing each other again.”
So they parted.
Sam said goodbye to Johnny and me.
The nurses took him away.
Visitors were not allowed, usually.
But they allowed one of his students, a young woman with whom he was deeply bonded, to be with him.
She cradled his head and gazed into his eyes as he died.
Johnny and I were reading in the waiting room. The attendants pushed the remains of Sam on a gurney past us through the waiting room and out into the corridor, heading for parts unknown.
We could see that Sam wasn’t there anymore.

—Charles Erickson
*

Looking back on my life, the text that changed, and continues to change, the way I see, experience and understand myself in the world and as the world is Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself.” Among many other things, he says: “All truths wait in all things.” And: “a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.” And:

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass…

—Johnny Stallings
*

I have had many dark spots in my life & have always pulled through. There are 3 people in my life that have been my guiding lights for many years. Due to my incarceration I can not do the things for them like I want to or that they deserve. Things like paint the house or fix their car or be there when they need me. To cook them dinner to just show them how much I love them, with a hug and a smile. Or to bring them my appreciation, my love, my joy. The joy they showed me that lives in me.

One of them was with me full when I was in a very dark place in life. Yes, darker than prison. A prison within a prison. I was forced to face my demons, there would be no running this time and I had never felt so close to death. I was able to completely divulge my life and all its damage. Not judged, not disciplined, just accepted and loved and made to feel like all should feel. HUMAN. We are all so beautiful and amazing and shattered and broken just right.

We are the beautifully broken. In my life I have people that mean more to me than life itself. And lately being away from them is suffering in itself. They are my family, family I choose to be family. I wish to be able to show you all how much I love you by Being there in life with you. Like a son should be.

Johnny, Nancy, Howard! You always and forever will be not in my heart but a big piece of my heart, mind and soul. Love Rocky.

—Rocky Hutchinson
*

Five Tanka Written Upon Spending the Night in a New Apartment

1.
I mop the floor with
apple cider vinegar,
note the orange leaves
that are somehow still hanging
in January.

2.
Can you hear me up
here? Sorry I’m so noisy!
My boots, my loud soul…
I’m setting up my new bed.
I’ve slept on too many floors.

3.
O lovely cooking
aromas wafting through wood!
My unpacked dishes…
A sharp red curry down there
calls to my empty white bowl.

4.
Around ten p.m.
I begin to unravel
my crisp new mattress.
Alone, I read directions:
This requires two people.

5.
It is a good thing
that I moved in yesterday.
Very cold today,
and brother turned his ankle.
On my own again.

—Alex Tretbar
*

Leftover Rainwater

Over the years I have been having a series of surgeries to correct a not ideal situation I was born with in my mouth. I found a good surgeon, a practicing Sikh, who periodically fixes something and the other day I was getting some stitches out and his assistant said, “Oh yeah, the doctor is a leftie”. And I had this little shock.

All these years and I never noticed he was working on me primarily with his left hand.

Not that it matters.

Except that I never noticed. I was a rebellious kid and my father used to regularly admonish me to pay attention.

Off in my own world I would think, fine, sure, I’ll get right on that. Not. My own world was much more interesting, intoxicating even, the collage I was making taking up the whole bedroom wall, the easy chairs with a tail and wings I was drawing everywhere, all the stories I was reading. I was busy.

Later as a teenager out in the world with only loose tethers to authority, I had to learn to pay attention. At least in a certain, hyper-vigilant, oh man this place is dangerous way. Is that car following me, are those gunshots, might there be drugs in that drink you just offered to share with me.

And then in my work life. Numbers. Nice safe numbers that need to be in certain places at certain times. Very important to pay attention then.

Then one day a girlfriend of a work colleague asked me to go to a yoga class with her. It was at a gym. The teacher was an older man, I had heard somewhere, I think he told us, he had been teaching Kung Fu and then there was an accident and he had to figure out how to make his body functional again.

Why him? Why then? He was weird. I often have an affinity for weird people, at least his kind. One class we would focus on our feet, one on our necks, and the girlfriend never came back but I did. He taught us this one posture that made us look like turtles that I still practice today. He only taught for 4 months or so, but somewhere in there I learned how to truly pay attention.

Then one day he was gone, retired they said.

Another teacher took his place, and she became my teacher. I followed her around from gym to studio to rented spaces to finally her own studio. By then I was paying a lot of attention to a wide range of things. And learned to teach the practices to others.

Always though with a memory of the slightly amused look my original teacher would get on his face…this how did I find myself here with the weights clanging and the grunting in the background with all these relatively normal people?

The other day, working with my own students and encouraging them to notice this or be aware of that or to bring their attention somewhere or to let it go, I could hear my father’s voice.

The irony of me now gently admonishing others to be in the moment, feel what they are feeling and notice things…

And the work I still have left to do. Every day there are so many new things to notice.

Perhaps a wild chickadee is taking a bath in leftover rainwater out back.

—Elizabeth Domike
*

Dear Reader

For the March issue of peace, love, happiness & understanding (3/2/23) you are invited to send me a short writing in prose or poetry about something or someone you love.

—Johnny

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 1/29/23
2023-01-29 15:00 - 17:00
T. S. Eliot

Keith Scales

On Sunday, January 29th, Keith Scales will read T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
The reading starts at 3 p.m. (PST). Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

DON’T MISS THIS!!!

peace, love & poetry
Johnny

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 1/15/23
2023-01-15 - 2023-02-14
Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

January 15, 2022

Roshi

I never really understood
what he said
but every now and then
I find myself
barking with the dog
or bending with the irises
or helping out
in other little ways

—Leonard Cohen
*

This song, written by Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson, feels like a meditation song to me:
Love Itself

The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love.

In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.

I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door—
Then Love Itself
Love Itself was gone.

All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.

I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door—
Then Love Itself
Love Itself was gone.

Then I came back from where I’d been.
My room, it looked the same—
But there was nothing left between
The Nameless and the Name.

All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.

I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door—
Then Love Itself
Love Itself was gone.
Love Itself was gone.

—Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson
*
Alex Tretbar sent this poem by Jim Gauer:

Will This Thought Do?

So I don’t think I’ll work today. Today it seems best
To let this bench hold my end up. Today
Of what my part was, brooding
Over the sum of things, there remains
Only the sum of things, and that part
Seems best. Yes this morning, whatever is
Will do nicely in my absence: this sunlight
Looks fine, it seems to be holding
Its own without me; the crowded sidewalk
Is fully employed, it appears its task
Has come to be child’s play; even the trees
Are doing well, they seem to be working
As well as trees can, as trees
These truly work, and the things they do
Are all nicely done. What a relief
To be wide awake, knowing my wakefulness
Doesn’t need me, sure that my bench exists.
Never doubting its existence beneath me, knowing
For sure that it is truly beneath me
To sit on a bench that I doubt exists.
How sweet to be fully alive, for just this morning
To have nothing to live for, to think well of my thought,
The way a child thinks of his childhood, the way that a tree
Makes do with its boughs, the way this moment lives
On what it’s seized in its hands, because this morning
What the moment has seized in its hands
Is sweet and alive, and this thought will do.
Will this thought do? It seems it’s already done so.
Will this thought do? Today there could be no doubt.
Will this thought do? Today beyond the shadow
Of a doubt my thought is done with
All the light I doubted, and now
Its shadow believes it too.
At last I know I’m the genius that no one needs to listen to.
Ontologist of a morning that turned out better than he thought.
The thinker there on a park bench, resting his chin
In a hand I gave him, a hand I traded
For a day of rest, for a moment’s peace
I could have had no hand in, for an instant
Under just this sky that out of the clear blue
Has come to me, as silent as I am,
Full of birds I did not think up.
No I don’t think I’ll work today. Today it sounds best
To let the silence work its ends out. Today
Of what my words were, sounds
Forming the heart of things, there remains
Only the heart of things, and this heart
Rings true.

—Jim Gauer
*

From an early age I was Mr. Know-It-All. I was a big expert on every topic, especially the ones of which I was completely ignorant. The older I get, the less I know. I don’t know who I am or what’s going on here. The world is bigger than my descriptions, opinions and explanations of the world. I’ve met a few of the 8 billion people on the planet, but the inner lives of even my closest friends are hidden from me. Every night my dreams teach me that my inner world is full of mysterious people and places and events that I can’t remember when I wake up. I don’t know why we humans create so many problems for ourselves and for each other. Why can’t we be kind to ourselves and nice to each other? I don’t have solutions for our problems. I don’t have answers for anyone’s questions. Sitting quietly with a cup of coffee in the morning, everything I see is beautiful, miraculous, impossible, including the “cup” of “coffee” and whoever it is who is typing this.

—Johnny Stallings

Here is Michel’s meditation on a contemplation from For Someone Else by Chana Friedmol Uhlman:

December 3, 2022

Praying As One

In communal prayer we come together to stand before God.
Facing our lives, facing our existence
in communal prayer, I am not alone,
I don’t need to hold everything by myself.
I have partners. A sacred community.
We are like a philharmonic orchestra:…
Each person playing their own part…
There are many roles…
We are like a single body…
Not everything rests on my shoulders.
Here and now, I am not alone.
My existence began before me
and my friends are here surrounding me
playing together
focusing together
praying together
to the Master of the World.

Community is where everyone thrives, even hermits. (I think they’re in denial.) When I allow myself to connect with others—and allow others to connect to me—we develop a unity, a symbiosis, an interconnected reality where the whole is more,…everything, than the sum of its parts. As cliché as this may be, it’s no less true. Think about your communities; is there health and vibrant vitality, growth and expansion? Or, is there dis-ease, sickness of mind and contention? Or, like my living community: flu, cold, Covid, RSV, or other respiratory affliction in ⅓ or more; in addition to all of the above. I particularly like the idea of a healthy community, as in today’s contemplation. I like this because I don’t need to carry the community on my own; we can all play together as one. Any differences, and I hope they are myriad and plethoric, are what make a symphonic event out of a chaotic cacophony—be it life, love, music, prayer, or meditation. Together we, all of us, are more. I am dissatisfied with situations pushing us to be less. Let us come together and be symphonic.

—Michel Deforge
*

The Box

When I was a young poet, I went into schoolrooms
to ask children, “What if you had a treasure box
to fill now, and open when you’re old?
What would you put in it?”

Oh, they listed their first shoes, a tree, a best friend,
a crown, a dog, “all my stuff I love so much.”

I made books of their wishes. But now that I’m
old myself—what’s in my box? Waking in the night,
every night, I watch the parade of all I have lost,
but not lost, stumble from the dream house

and become a blessing before the morning’s light.

—Kim Stafford
*

This Altar of Earth and Sky

Before he died
The old farmer
Told his lazy son:
“I buried
a chest of gold
In the field.
Plow deep
And far
And wide
And you’re
Sure to find it.”
The son plowed
For a day
A week
A month
A year
And found
No gold
But the fields
Well-plowed
Yielded
A Bountiful
Harvest
And on his
Ambits
He noticed
Fences
That wanted
Mending
A coop, a stall
In need of repair
Herds and flocks
To water and feed.
In time
A treasure
Accrued
From his
Devotion
To land
And labor.

With my penchant
For idleness
I call to mind
That lazy son
And
Putter
Endlessly
In my
Front yard
And back
Ambling from
Garden
To garage
Workbench
To toolshed
A path
Well worn
Over 18 years
Through rituals
Of planting
Pruning
Construction
And repair.

In time
Any practice
Can become
A spiritual practice
Any object
Sacred:
This wheelbarrow
Hauling compost
That hammer
Setting a nail.
In time
The druid
Doffs his robes
And
Dons overalls
The monk
Sets down
His holy book
And lifts up
The common spade
Even
The high priest
Retires
From the temple
And returns
To this altar
Of earth and sky.

—Will Hornyak December 2022
*

#65 Don’t Underestimate Yourself

“Don’t underestimate yourself. You have the ability to wake up. You have the ability to be compassionate. You just need a little bit of practice to be able to touch the best that is in you. Enlightenment, mindfulness, understanding, and compassion are in you. Very simple practices—such as meditative walking, mindful breathing, or washing dishes mindfully—make it possible for you to leave hell and touch the positive seeds that are within you.”
–from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh

“Don’t underestimate yourself. You have the ability to wake up.” Believe me, if this happened to me it can happen to you. I “woke up” back in March of 1994, and it came as a bolt out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting it, or hoping or praying for it. Indeed, I was not the praying sort at all—more agnostic, or…simply indifferent to any kind of religion. My father proudly pronounced that he was agnostic on even days and atheist on odd days. I was like that, only even less vocal about it.

What happened? One afternoon I was talking on the phone to an aspiring artist, helping her with contacts in architecture firms, encouraging her to call and show her work. I’d been helping her and a dozen other ‘emerging artists,’ as we called them, for 6 months or so. Believe me, it had not been in my nature to be so helpful—I’d sort of been roped into it. I’d been on tv in a segment on artists’ careers, and the anchorman had done a great job—I was expecting lots of commissions for more work! Instead, I was deluged with requests for help. Shoot! Not what I had in mind, but I offered a workshop, and another, with a couple dozen artists. I gave handouts, articles I’d used, helpful tips on how to present your work, etc. No sense in making others go through all the junk I had gone through. And I followed up with all of them every few weeks, just to see how they were doing, if maybe they were discouraged and thinking of giving up.

And then this afternoon of March 20, 1994, when talking to this one woman, she asked, “I don’t get it. Why are you doing this? You have a successful career, you’re very busy with your own work. What’s in it for you? What do you want from us???” And I said, “All I ask from you is that you do the same for somebody else some day. Isn’t that what it’s all about?” I don’t think that it was I who said those words. They just came out. And then I started crying, and crying. Something—everything—just opened up. I simply…understood…everything. The world, the universe, God—no, beyond God, not limited to God. I understood, and everything was complete, whole, filled with joy, with light, overwhelmed with love. These words can’t even express it adequately. I’m crying into the phone. This poor woman asks, “Are you alright?” I said, “Oh, you have no idea how alright I am!! Thank you!”

And that was it. My life changed from that instant. I knew I had to help others, to keep this alive, to continue to be imbued with joy. And I had to scramble to understand others, those not like me, since I’d had this moment of total understanding. I had to read, read, read to find out what this was all about. And I had to be quiet, and listen, to feel that beauty, that light, that joy.

The word that comes to mind is propelled. I was propelled to live my life differently than ever before. It is difficult, it can be frightening (but I am not afraid). It can be hard work (but I can’t live otherwise). If I’d had this moment of pure understanding, then I had to follow up with concrete understanding, of making connections with all those who I didn’t know, with all those who were not like me.

I must understand others. I have dragged my husband to five different states to work with Habitat for Humanity: Meridian, Mississippi; John’s Island, South Carolina; Bartlesville, Oklahoma; Charleston, West Virginia, etc.… I have mentored at-risk teenagers (still, and now in their forties); worked in homeless shelters; supported a Native American woman and her family for 18 years; tutored dyslexic teenagers and adults; tutored Hispanic adults; given art workshops to homeless teens…and, of course, the most wonderful and joyful (and stressful) of all, being a friend and supporter to inmates at Two Rivers Correctional Institution for the last six years.

Working my way to understanding (and loving!) others. After all of this litany, my point is that this just happened to me; I didn’t work to make it happen. And if I experienced this, so can we all. We can awaken. It is a life of joy. It is also sadness and grief and work, but that is all part of the beauty and the joy.

—Jude Russell
*

It’s still the beginning of a new year and there is a practice from the Buddhas’s time called “Beginning Anew.” It is a practice for keeping the community healthy with kindness and openness.

Thay writes, “Beginning Anew is not to ask for forgiveness. Beginning Anew is to change your mind and heart, to transform the ignorance that brought about wrong actions of body, speech, and mind, and to help you cultivate your mind of love. Your shame and guilt will disappear, and you will begin to experience the joy of being alive. All wrongdoings arise in the mind. It is through the mind that wrongdoings can disappear.”

At Plum Village, they practice the ceremony of Beginning Anew every week. Everyone sits in a circle with a vase of fresh flowers in the center. The ceremony has three parts: flower watering, expressing regrets, and expressing hurts and difficulties. This practice can prevent feelings of hurt from building up over the weeks and helps make the situation safe for everyone in the community.

They begin with flower watering. They take the vase of flowers in their hands to reflect the freshness and beauty of the flower. During flower watering, each person acknowledges the wholesome, wonderful qualities of the others. It is not flattery; it is to speak the truth. Everyone has some strong points that can be seen with awareness.

At my Thursday night sangha, one woman told us that she does this practice with and for herself at home. Although it is meant for a group or a family, she sees how valuable it is for herself living alone. One way she found to do it is to write herself a love letter. Inspired by how Thich Nhat Hanh would write love letters to world leaders that he disagreed with.

So this is an INVITATION!:

WRITE a love letter to yourself. You might acknowledge whatever you feel good about that you did this past year to nurture yourself or another, or how you may have helped someone, or how you learned something. How was your practice and your communication with others? How did you keep your heart open and yourself well? You may have regrets that you have dwelled on; acknowledge them but let them go with compassion for yourself. Maybe end with compassion for another that has done you a wrong. This is a practice like others – be a good listener to yourself, speak/write from the heart, and bear witness for deep understanding.

The second INVITATION!!

WRITE a love letter to Thay. Dear Thay! Thank him for what he has taught you this past year. Was there a special meditation you read and responded to from Your True Home?Is there a difference in the way you breathe or walk? Do you take more time to listen and notice what you are noticing?

Debbie Buchanan passed on an Ode written by Joe Lamb—a veteran, a writer, a meditator, an arborist—published in Nostos, a magazine of Poerty and Art. It is titled : “A Letter to Thich Nhat Hanh.” Here’s a little excerpt:

Dear Thich Nhat Hanh,

Thank you for teaching me walking meditation. Walking exceptionally slowly through forests, feeling the earth with each step, slowing down to notice the shapes of leaves, the smell of bark, the sound of my own breath.

Thank you for the reminder that microaggressions build up in the unconscious where they can radiate out into the world. More importantly, I want to thank you, for the many reminders that micro kindnesses also build up and radiate out into the world, that micro acts of compassion can heal and nourish people we may never even meet….

It’s misleading to say you taught me. We were never introduced. (He knows him from “a couple of lectures” and from a writing workshop with a two of Thay’s other students, Maxine and Therese.)

Was it you who taught our sangha to walk slowly, counting our breaths, feeling our presence on the earth? Or was it Maxine and Therese? Where does the self stop and the other begin? Where does the teacher stop and the student begin? You complicated this confusion when you said that you are not only the man we see wearing a monk’s robe, you are also a cloud, a river, a forest.

You said this was not religion or philosophy, but rather just an observation about biology, about the earth itself. Thank you for that marvelous confusion….

Yes, of course, we are water….

Yes of course I am forest….

So thank you for that great gift of reminding my anxious brain – always fussing with imaginary futures, always trying to heal the wounded past – that right here, right now, I am in the world, an astoundingly beautiful world, and the world is in me.

—from Joe Lamb’s “Letter to Thich Nhat Hanh”

The letter reminds me how lucky we have been to have a great wisdom teacher alive while we are here too. And how Thay and the monks and nuns would say to us, “We are here because you are here.”

Thank you all for your reading, responding, and your practice. Feel free to share your letters.

Happy New Year!

–Katie Radditz

peace, love, happiness & understanding 1/5/23
2023-01-05 - 2023-02-01
Gertrude Stein (by Picasso)

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

January 5, 2023

So now to come to the real question of punctuation, periods, commas, colons, semi-colons and capitals and small letters. I have had a long and complicated life with all these.
—Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America, 1935

A Carafe in Bb Major
by Alex Tretbar (Guest Editor)

“The difference is spreading.”

Last night I sat down to read the final pages of Gertrude Stein’s small, strange book Tender Buttons. I don’t use bookmarks, as I’m usually able to quickly identify where I left off. I remembered reading the section titled “Cups” on page 49 of my edition, but I saw nothing familiar in the following subsection, “Rhubarb,” which consists of a single sentence: “Rhubarb is susan not susan not seat in bunch toys not wild and laughable not in little places not in neglect and vegetable not in fold coal age not please.” So I read “Rhubarb” and moved on.

The book is divided into three parts: “Objects,” “Food,” and “Rooms.” On page 60 I read “A Center in a Table,” the final section of “Food,” then turned the page and began “Rooms,” which begins as follows:

Act so that there is no use in a center. A wide action is not a width. A preparation is given to the ones preparing. They do not eat who mention silver and sweet. There was an occupation.

That initial imperative —“Act so that there is no use in a center”—rang through me in such a way that I knew I wasn’t reading or hearing it for the first time, and the heavy declarative statement that concludes the paragraph—“There was an occupation”—struck me with the ghostly certainty of déjà vu (“already seen”), or, more accurately, déjà lu (“already read”).

I read eleven pages of Tender Buttons on the evening of December 21st, then read the same eleven pages again on the evening of December 22nd, remembering none of them until reaching “Rooms.” How could I read so many pages before stumbling across a certain phrasing or arrangement of words that would seem to indicate I had read them before, and recently? The answer is not that Tender Buttons is forgettable. The answer is that Tender Buttons is slippery. As Juliana Spahr writes, it is “a book always in the process of being read over and over.” It acts as if there is no use in a center.

“Lying in a conundrum…”

I served 64 months in the Oregon prison system, and was released on July 22nd, 2022. I spent the final ten days of my sentence in quarantine, in the hole, and I had made grand literary plans for those ten days. In my luggage of plastic trash bags, alongside a half jar of coffee and other essentials, I had stowed a stack of poetry collections, anthologies, and magazines, and I was looking forward to the 240 hours of unfettered reading. I didn’t bring any fiction, save for the handful of short stories sprinkled throughout the magazines, and I came to regret that decision.

Now, it wasn’t ten days of traditional segregation: I had all of my canteen luxuries, I was granted time each day for phone calls and microwaving, and the general vibe was not punitive. Plus, after all, my prison sentence was about to end. But the pressure cooker of the cell came to seem like the anteroom between hell and heaven, despite my knowing that prison isn’t (necessarily) hell, and liberty isn’t (necessarily) heaven. I continued waking up at 5, drinking cold tap water coffee, and reading and writing, but the onslaught of poetry’s nonstop ellipsis, misdirection and elusion/allusion began to erode my ability to pass the hours calmly. I thought of Ezra Pound slowly losing it, writing his lonely Cantos in the oblivion of St. Elizabeths. I craved narrative: A then B, so C. I wanted fiction. Characters doing things, and things happening to characters. Undreamlike causation.

One of the books I brought with me was an issue of Fonograf Editions, and on its cover was a pink and purple abstraction “indebted to [the Russian painter Kasimir] Malevich’s Suprematist artistic vision, one that believed that ‘the appropriate means of representation is always the one which gives fullest possible expression to feeling as such and which ignores the familiar appearance of objects.’” But in that ten-day moment before release, I was sick of the avant-garde, sick of abstraction, and sick of poetry. I wanted objects—like a milk carton passed through a hole in a metal door—to appear familiar. Tender Buttons may have been a torturous book to possess at that time.

Images brand our spirits, and the twin sigils of the final cell I lived in were:

Yes, a ridiculous pairing, but I believe that there is no highbrow, no lowbrow. There is only brow, and beneath it the all-seeing eye through which we witness our lives.

“Nickel, what is nickel…”

Stein renders the familiar unfamiliar. Her prose poems (if you can call them that, if you can call them anything at all) approach “A Table” or “A Shawl” from unexpected angles, with grammatically impenetrable constructions, and for this reason her work is often cited as bearing the Cubist torch into literature. Here is the first and most famous piece from Tender Buttons, titled “A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass”:

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

What are we to make of this? Tender Buttons has engendered much academic handwringing and dissection over the past century, and you are not alone if, in reading the above excerpt, you find yourself shaking your head or scoffing. Perhaps the most agreed-upon facet of Tender Buttons is that we can agree upon nothing when regarding it. It is an object “simultaneously considered to be a masterpiece of verbal Cubism, a modernist triumph, a spectacular failure, a collection of confusing gibberish, and an intentional hoax.” Like Joyce’s Ulysses or Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the book “is perhaps more often written about than actually read” (Poets.org).

And yet I recommend that everyone read it. Unlike the behemoth works of Joyce or Proust, it can be read in a single evening or two, and there is no constellation of characters and motives and histories to keep straight. There are few, if any, people in Tender Buttons (personal pronouns are haunting in their rare surfacing), and nothing really happens. But there is music, and undeniable passion—even be it bridled or obscured by syntax. Just look at those first seven words of the book: “A kind in glass and a cousin.” Never mind what it “meant” to Stein, or what it “means” to me. It is just a beautiful arrangement of, as Coleridge defined poetry, “the best words in the best order.” The poet Charles Bernstein has provided some of the best advice for readers of Tender Buttons, and it is worth quoting him at length:

The sections of the work are not “about” subjects that are discussed but are their own discrete word objects (verbal constellations). Meaning in these works is not something to be extracted or deciphered but rather to be responded to, so that the reader’s associations create a cascading perceptual experience, guided by the uncanny arrangement of the words. The more readers can associate with the multiple vectors of each word or phrase meanings, the more fully they can feast on the unfolding semantic banquet of the work. The key is not to puzzle it out but to let the figurative plenitude of each work play out; for, indeed, this work is not invested in a predetermining structure or in precluding or abstracting meaning. Tender Buttons does not resist figuration but entices it. And the work is rife with linguistic and philosophical investigation as well as an uncannily acute self-awareness of its own processes.

“A letter was nicely sent.”

I was exhibiting an uncannily acute self-awareness of my own processes. (Have you ever felt clairvoyant in the knowledge that you know what you are about to do? Is it not strange that, before we go to pick up the plastic mug of cold predawn coffee, we know that we are about to pick up the plastic mug of cold predawn coffee? And even if we decide, in auto-rebellion, not to pick up the mug, we construct a new future the knowledge of which is instantaneously and irrevocably ours—until we change our minds again. I used to take drugs, I think, for a simple reason: I didn’t want to know what happened next. I wanted to be surprised.)

Alas, in a single afternoon of quarantine I devoured the handful of short stories available to me, and once again I was left with poetry, the desolation of my processes, my circuits and orbits and feedback loops. For five years I had been invested in a predetermined structure, and that structure was beginning to dissolve. Reading poems—whether they were straightforwardly narrative or relentlessly experimental—repulsed me, and so did writing them.

The last letter I sent from prison contained the last poem I wrote in prison. Ironically or perhaps not, it was a letter to someone living in the same building as me, another prisoner. Distance is often nonphysical. Here’s the poem:

Special Features

there isn’t a thing to say
so close to the relinquished
light of a star
what really comprises the common dust
of living rooms & cells
panting
panting
the television is panting
is
underwater
with grief
I look what I think is west
is west it’s hard to tell
amid so many competing surfaces
amid
amid
amid absent flowers & oxidized materials
you can oversanitize to the point where everything becomes
is permanently
clean
& the action movie soundtrack
convinces me of climax
a nonexistent curtain falls
the show is
the story is over / I am asleep
in the deleted scenes of my life

To me—the writer of this poem who had forgotten its contents until now, digging through my notebooks, reading it now with the privilege of distance—the poem reeks of wordsickness. But it’s okay to be sick of words. Even the sun can make us sneeze.

“Book was there, it was there.”

A pink is not of vitamin, is it. Smaller
and smalling. What recedes fortifies
and running now, a mauve. Crossing
a street requiring friends in need of.
We are not a wobble. We nosy. Let us
consider longing now the ultimate form.

Or, as my friend Irene Cooper puts it:

no commas
~for GS & ABT

pop buttons pop projections of rimming. collect the close & closings tendered against the winded heart. red petals the threaded plain & some cleavage is rising. plastics are crashing are the rain sugaring the cavity are a red tempest in a chest. in closure some button slips its absence & is too much is intolerable is undone & so open. open.

Or, as my friend Laura Winberry puts it:

the buttons are as tender as we make them

[essayistic interpretations of cubism in non-prosaic form, in conversation with Miss Stein]

a trach tube is or isn’t a direct pathway to living
(well or at all). so is a catheter, a pic line, a drip
like a bright sweep through the body every eight
hours or so.

it doesn’t all have to be so tragic. we see
things and beings through to some kind of end
then start again. so many moments are synonymous
with continue.

when mom asides about the new nurse I think
he’s born-again Christian as if he were
also diseased he’s too neat—I laugh.

after a night in his tender she admits to being wrong—
he’s lovely and my buddy let me tell you his life story.

the subject seen from a multitude of viewpoints
crescendos into a tenderness of context. what was once
angular, disjointed, rearranged
becomes whole.

I think what I mean to say is multi
-dimensional, -faceted, -plying as in
nothing is ever what it seems.

I don’t yet know how to call this tender,
but something in my body
tells me I will.

Or, as the late Trish Keenan of the band Broadcast puts it, in the song “Tender Buttons”:

The cortex
The comb
The codeine
The comma
The context

Such is Stein’s influence. And the funny thing is that when I first came across that unlikely pair of words—“tender” and “buttons”—it wasn’t in the form of Stein’s book. It was the Broadcast song, a complicatedly hopeful acoustic-electric drone in the key of B-flat major.

The website Last.fm allows users to log the songs they listen to on their computers and mobile devices, and this evening I performed a search of my account, which I created in 2006. I searched for “Tender Buttons,” and found that I listened to the song for the first time at 12:38 p.m. on October 22, 2009, 14 days after my 20th birthday. According to Wunderground.com, it was 54 degrees Fahrenheit in Lawrence, Kansas, at that very moment, the sky was cloudy, and the wind was blowing around 15 miles per hour from the north-northwest. I was probably stoned on that 295th day of the Gregorian calendar, a Thursday, skipping class and lazing on the green couch of a flophouse attic.

If I remember correctly, I was heartbroken at that time, and I would spend many hours by the attic window, watching the leaves of a great tree tremble in the wind. It was years before I knew who Gertrude Stein was, a time when my addiction was still like a kitten: small and manageable, asleep and purring, contained within my palm.

The codeine, the comma, the context.

Stein’s Enigmas
by Kim Stafford

Tender Buttons has been called the stuff of genius, and of intentional obfuscation. Nothing but an utterly original mind could produce such a range of response. Gertrude Stein once said of Paris, it’s not so much what it gives you—it’s what it doesn’t take away. Paris clearly didn’t take away Stein’s almost childish instinct for feral experimentation, and readers have been struggling and reveling ever since in what her pen splashed forth.

For a reader, Tender Buttons offers a challenge, a series of jokes, secrets, a scatter of debris, a net of clues, hints, hunches, all with a rich dose of affection for true freedom of speech.

For a writer, the lessons are many, and a bit different. First off, the lines in her book seem to say, apart from what they are saying, or not saying: Go your own weird way. The lines are presenting evidence that language belongs to each of us, and all of us, and none of us. Language, by Stein’s witness, is a freakish, frisky, irreverent rush of possibility, not to be imprisoned by any grammarian’s so-called rules. Yes, such freedom by a writer may lose some readers, but may also gain the fierce loyalty of some others.

A printer friend was meeting with a poet to talk about designing a broadside for a poem. Said the printer, “Wouldn’t it be easier to read if you arranged the lines this way, instead of what you have?”
“I’m a poet,” was the reply. “Is my goal to make things easy?”
“Ah,” said the printer. “You taught me something there.”

And Stein’s book, over a century old, is still teaching us something, perhaps a different set of lessons for each reader who makes it through the book. What the book seems to want to teach me is to question my practice, when I’m in danger of making too much sense and too little music. To question my goal when I’m trying to persuade instead of sing. To question my purpose on earth when I’m relying on the rational instead of birdsong.

I can’t do what Stein has done—or can I? Is it just that I haven’t tried? What’s to stop me from breaking the rules I’ve followed so obediently for so many years, to stop me from achieving escape velocity from the firmament of the clear, the cogent, and the utterly tamed?

Some years ago at a conference for artists, the Indigenous old-time folk singer Buffy St. Marie was to give a talk, and I thought, foolishly, that she would coast along on her former fame, maybe play a few classics, and be done. Instead, she sang ideas at us with fierceness that stunned me. Among many calls to trust our own way as artists, she used a word I had only associated with the fight for Indigenous rights. She told us an artist must maintain complete sovereignty over what we do and how we do it, saying, this is my poem, song, painting…this is my language, my tune, my colors…and the way I do what I do belongs to me.

Last summer, I met a pine tree in Scotland, alone on a hill, its trunk crooked, its branches quirky, lopsided, eccentric in the extreme. It was more ruin in wood than civilized for the lumber trade. Perhaps it had been left alone when they cut the others, simply because it managed to be strange.

In the tree’s presence, I found myself jamming words together with maybe 5% of the freedom of a Gertrude Stein, but still more in keeping with the tree before me than what I might have written without my encounter with Tender Buttons. For what if polite forms of language are lying, really, about the true, knotted complexity of the world, and what Stein does in Tender Buttons hews more closely to the rugged real?

Lone Pine in Scotland

One flung green gown on one hung
shade skirt growing outward, glowing
inward, light-hungry, root-thirsty, long
wind-limber, limb-laddered, ever loyal
to the nation of its kind, but hermit here,
monkish nun hospitable to wasp and crow,
rain-wet silhouette of old trunk with young
twigs, buds, needles, cones glistening for
dawn above by dusk below, earth-offered,
ring-hearted, bark-guarded, pitch-scented,
pollen-dusted citizen, sentinel, sovereign.

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 1/1/23
2023-01-01 15:00 - 16:00
Start the New Year right with Bibliophiles Unanimous!

We had a great time with our annual group reading of A Christmas Carol on December 18th.
On Sunday, January 1st, at 3 p.m. (PST) our theme will be SONG LYRICS. Bring your favorites!
Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

This is gonna be fun! (You get extra points if you sing the songs.)

peace, love & music
Johnny

Bibliophiles Unanimous!: Annual Group Reading of A Christmas Carol
2022-12-18 15:00 - 17:00
illustration by Arthur Rackham

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

On Sunday, December 18, at 3 p.m. (PST), we will have our annual group reading of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Todd Oleson of Walla Walla, Washington, and Keith Scales of Eureka Springs, Arkansas will be among the stellar cast. Gather round the warm light of your computer screen and enjoy this wonderful tale of love and transformation.

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

Bring the kids & grandkids!

As Tiny Tim says:
God Bless Us, Every One!

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 12/15/22
2022-12-15 - 2023-01-14
photo by Howard Thoresen

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

December 15, 2022

often when walking in the streets of lower Manhattan or on the promenade along the Hudson River
a young father crosses my path chatting gaily with his son or carrying his daughter on his shoulders
pointing to the statue
or a young woman and a young man stroll beside me
their bodies entwined their eyes shining the involuntary smiles
and i sigh in the knowledge that i will never be a young father or a young lover
or i read about some young actor who at 23 has a resume as long as i had at 60 and a better
the scientist, the painter, the family man, the social worker, the deep sea diver, the marathon runner
when there arises in me a longing to have another life
to have been a different person
to live for a thousand years
i remember the stories of the yogis i read as a young boy—the siddhi of having more than one body and thus of working out innumerable skeins of karma which to them was a terrible task but to me sounds delightful
there arises another something that feels like a conviction “i am already doing this. all these bodies are mine, not just the human but the dogs and cats and cockroaches, the breakdancer and the ballerina, the blah blah blah
these are my bodies my pasts and my futures, i am life flowing through a million lives”
the guru said he had the power to enter the highest state at will and i think so do i
i have only to shift my eyes in one direction or another and i am all beings and all being
but it isn’t a trance, i don’t fall down or have to be taken care of by awed disciples
i can continue to meander and people don’t know that i am them or maybe they do

—Howard Thoresen
*

Dec. 17, 1834
There is in every man a determination of character to a peculiar end, counteracted often by unfavorable fortune, but more apparent the more he is at liberty. This is called his genius, or his nature, or his turn of mind. The object of Education should be to remove all obstructions & let this natural force have free play & exhibit its peculiar product. It seems to be true that no man in this is deluded. This determination of his character is to something in nature; something real. This object is called his Idea. It is that which rules his most advised actions, those especially that are most his, & is most distinctly discerned by him in those days or moments when he derives the sincerest satisfaction from his life.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Emerson in His Journals, selected and edited by Joel Porte, p. 132
*

#264 Compassionate Listening

“Compassionate listening is crucial. We listen with the willingness to relieve the suffering of the other person, not to judge or argue with her. We listen with all our attention. Even if we hear something that is not true, we continue to listen deeply so the other person can express her pain and release the tensions within herself. If we reply to her or correct her, the practice will not bear fruit. If we need to tell the other person that her perception was not correct, we can do that a few days later privately and calmly.”
(from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh)

Recently in a discussion group, we have been experiencing a certain degree of ‘dialogue imbalance,’ I’ll call it. One or two well-meaning members have been imposing advice (and veiled judgment) upon others who are sharing their thoughts and feelings. This has caused those ‘counseled’ to withdraw and become reluctant to share.

We all need to express shared vulnerability, not impose answers, solutions, corrections or advice. Any and all of these evoke frustration and feelings of being misunderstood (and judged) instead of being heard.

This can be a challenge. People want to help, and we are a solution-driven, solution-finding society. We believe that the best way to help is to find/give answers, when often the most meaningful help is simply…to listen.

—Jude Russell
*

I Know Nothing

I know nothing about music, but when the piccolo
got lost in the cave, and shadows began to weep,
I wished I did. That way, I could follow the scales
beading a dragon’s neck all the way to the tail,
melody oozing slow as honey from the strings
weaving a shroud for the hangman’s daughter
after her singing silence robbed my sorry hoard.
I wish I knew the first few notes violas scribbled
to reveal how percussion crushed the grass bowing
toward the river where the horns flowed fast.
And when the soloist turned her words to silver
shining past my mind, I wished I could mesh
that lingering flame burning the English horn
to sear my soul long after the concert ended.

—Kim Stafford
*

Parts of Me

Part of me is ready to begin.
Another part is already finished.

Other parts—unknown—keep themselves to themselves.

Part of me is party to silent movies
playing for no one
at a drive-in theater in the sky.

We are all of us part of each other.

Part of me doesn’t believe that, though. Part of me stubs its toe
on trashcans in bowling alleys, chair legs in cemeteries.

Part of me is gripping its part of me’s head
like a housewife testing a melon, in market.

Part of me’s frightened of what I just said.

Part of me wants a lobotomy, but cries for its mommy
instead. Part of me’s still an egg.

Part of me’s already dead.

Part of me is the start of me. Part of me’s also the end of me.
Part of me part of me part of me.

The part of me that thinks it is smart of me
to write about all of the parts of me
is one of the very worst parts of me—take it from [part of] me.

Part of me tires of parroting you, pardoning me, petering out & catching the flu.
But part of me also revels in blue, resorts to leaving the zoo.

Part of me finds it hard to write
when part of someone else
is reading over part of me’s shoulder.

Part of me never knows how far apart
the parts of me are.

Part of me’s tired of faltering, and in the end,
the art of me consists of weaving together the far-flung parts of me.

Part of me parts the curtains and shows you all of me.

—Alex Tretbar
*

Sometimes I sit down to write a poem and sometimes I’m writing in my journal and something I’ve written seems like it could be a little poem. Here are some old and some recent examples:

What the Crow Said

“Caw,” said the crow
I didn’t say anything
I just wrote down what the crow said
*

My Retirement Plan

I’m waiting for the elves to arrive
with bags of gold
*

a guy drives by in a blue car
covered with cherry blossom petals
*

couple of guys
unloading mattresses
from a Frito-Lay truck
what the hell is going on?
*

last night I was playing miniature golf in my dream
*

cold night
sitting by the woodstove
the happiest man alive
*

holy holy holy is the bean plant
cup of coffee
the stuffed animals on the window sill
that have been loved unto baldness
the song sparrow
the sunlight
and even the man sitting at his laptop
failing once again to say the unsayable
*

Christmas Prayer

Thank you, Jesus,
for giving me this day off work.
*

the Buddha’s best sermon
was when he gave that guy a flower
*

Y’know those paperweights
with a little house
and little trees
and if you turn it upside-down
and then rightside-up again
it snows?
I’m sitting in that little house.

—Johnny Stallings
*

Marcus Aurelius vs. Marie Howe

I have been in the habit these past weeks of picking up Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and finding a quote to ponder for the day. There was one quote last week that became the center of my conversations with three very different people.

Look attentively on each particular thing you do, and ask yourself if death be a terror because it deprives you of this.

Wow. I was immediately struck by how profound this statement is. To me, this is a reminder to pay close attention and choose wisely how each day is spent. And then I started to feel a little insignificant. Marcus Aurelius, was, after all, an emperor, and wrote Meditations as a record for himself of self-improvement. Perhaps the idea of looking so closely through the lens of death robbing me of such importance is not for the everyday person.

I shared this quote with my daughter and we discussed my thoughts as I continued to chew on its meaning and she sat back for a moment and then said, “Yeah but what about What the Living Do?”

What the Living Do is a poem within a book of the same name written by Marie Howe. Howe wrote the collection of poems about her brother who died of AIDS-related complications in his 20s. The poem simply and eloquently reminds us that the everyday moments – both good, bad and indifferent – are what make up a human life.

When I look back at my 48 years lived, which includes the birth of four children, a marriage, a divorce and falling in love again, these big life events are not what stand out to me. Life is driving through Delaware in July at sunset and seeing people in their Sunday best eating ice cream cones. Life is smelling the perfume my mother wore when she’d get dressed up and go out on the town – the scent taking me back to sitting on her bed as a child, watching her put her jewelry on. Life is listening to my son tell me casually about his day on the ride home from school, my heart filling up with his words, unbeknownst to him. And life is feeling butterflies on a morning walk through my neighborhood in summer as I resonate on the poem from my lover as I swiftly prance down the sidewalk, smelling every rose I can reach to stick my nose into.

The ordinary is the extraordinary. And when I look again at what Marcus Aureilus has to say, I think he understood this as well. It isn’t about what we do but how we perceive. It is in the looking that we can spot the miracles.

What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some
utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the
crusty dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the
everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the
sunlight pours through
the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in
here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the
street, the bag breaking,
I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday,
hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee
down my wrist and sleeve,
I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush:
This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you
called that yearning.
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the
winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and
more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of
myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a
cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat
that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

—poem by Marie Howe

—Nicole Rush
*

November 2, 2022 CALL OF THE HEART

The initial bedrock from which speech grows is the voice.
When the voice is born, before words and prior to sentences,
one’s desires are already beginning to sprout.
Being revealed is the possibility of the turning to another, of a conversation.

The voice precedes words.
The way the words of the prayer sound becomes their meaning,
paving for them a path to their destination.
It’s as if the melody of the prayer
lifts the words on its wings,
whispers between the pages of the prayerbook,
amongst the prayer shawls,
ascends from the place of prayer to the Holy Ark,
soars through the windows, out to the boundless skies.

—from Prepare My Prayer by Rabbi Dov Singer

This causes me to think of infants, to wonder at the sounds. The process of self-discovery, of self-awareness; hearing the sounds, giving meaning, learning speech, communicating needs and wants. Primal, unyielding. With age comes inhibitions, filters, separating the sounds from the heart connecting to the mind. Struggle begins to communicate what is felt, using only words. And it fails—miserably. Life then moves on, striving to reconnect mind and heart. Each strives and finds a way, in time. Sound and heart rejoin; satisfying communication resumes. Heart and mind join as one.

This is the struggle, to communicate with heart and mind in one voice to convey deepest feelings, sensations to another. Reaching out with voice to connect, to be heard, to be seen. Finding others, uniting in common cause, raising voices on high, drawing close. We reach out, yearning to connect, finding our voices, expressing heart’s desires. Throughout life we continue to use voice and sound, still striving to communicate as we did when infants, crying out from the heart to the One who hears.

—Michel Deforge
