Nancy Ewart's watercolors

San Francisco artist and critic Nancy Ewart posted some beautiful watercolors this weekend at Chez Namaste Nancy.

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How to make a prairie

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          To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

          One clover, and a bee,

          And revery.

          The revery alone will do,

          If bees are few.

                                   — Emily Dickinson

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THE ORCHARD — Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Paul Gaugin: Orchard Below Bihorel Church

      Almond, apple, and peach, 
      Walnut, cherry, plum, 
      Ash, chestnut, and beech, 
      And lime and sycamore 
      We have planted for days to come; 

      No stony monument 
      But growing, changing things, 
      Leaf, fruit, and honied scent, 
      Bloom that the bees explore, 
      Sprays where the bird sings. 

      In other Junes than ours 
      When the boughs spread and rise 
      Tall into leafy towers 
      To grace and guard this small 
      Corner of paradise; 

      When petals red and white 
      Resign to warming air, 
      Without speech or sight 
      From our hands they will fall 
      On happy voices there.

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Pissoir en hiver

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thanks: unknown flickruser

My favorite German tongue-twister (Zungenbrecher)

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      Es klapperten die Klapperschlangen,
      bis ihre Klappern schlapper klangen.

      The rattlesnakes rattled
      until their rattles sounded run-down.


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Better homes and gardens

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Huffpo and SFGate.com have been running photos of million-dollar homes as they come up for sale. The intention is evidently to inspire awe amongst us low-rent dwellers at the privileged lifestyles of the rich, whom we continue to subsidize with our tax dollars.

What impresses me most is that 1) the wealthy seem to have little or no taste concerning interior decoration, the norm being something like a Hilton hotel room; and 2) their homes are filled with enormous amounts of unused space, so that vacancy signifies luxury. So I decided to post my own series of desirable real estate, based mainly on price and my own concepts of imaginative design.

thanks flickr user: momentcaptured.

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I thought the new Howl movie sucked

Netflix coughed up the new movie about Allen Ginsberg’s Howl last weekend. God, was I annoyed. I watched it for a half-hour and felt like throwing up. I don’t know what was worse, watching James Franco trying to imitate Ginsy (major fail—they'd have done better with Meryl Streep) or looking at those stupid Casper-the-Ghost animations flying around Manhattan. Just drape some guys in never-worn white t-shirts, show cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, a little saxophone music in the background, and we're transported right back to the Fifties, right, guys?

The worst of it was that the movie wasn’t—a primary feature of Howl—even funny. I returned this calamitous piece of shit to Netflix as soon as the objective circumstances permitted.

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The Second Turning of the Wheel of Dharma

I was asked to clarify Sunday's post about the Namgyal Monastery inscription in Dharamsala. I don't where it is taken from, but the text derives from the Prajna-Paramita literature, known as the Second Turning of the Wheel. It summarizes the entire teaching in a few simple lines.

Because phenomena are empty—in other words, because things exist only temporarily and can't exist independently of other things—the world is as it were apparitional, even if its constituent elements are subject to cause-and-effect (because nothing exists independently).

Our existence as biorganisms adrift in this world of birth-and-death makes us instinctively view phenomena as permanent and self-sustaining, and inevitably we want to glom onto them. But because we cannot, we are led to suffering. This awareness makes us want to help others.

I should add perhaps that although people can and do practice meditation to good effect without reference to any of this, it is the above that defines meditation as a Mahayana Buddhist practice.

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On the nature of phenomena

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Standing Buddha from Sahri Bahlol, Pakistan, 2nd-3rd c. CE

     

     All phenomena are like a reflection,

     clear and pure without turbulence,

     ungraspable and indescribable, purely

     derived from cause and effect without

     self-nature and location.

     If you, by understanding phenomena

     in this way, work for the welfare of

     sentient beings without discrimination,

     you will be born as sons or daughters

     of the Buddhas.

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I copied this inscription placed over the entrance to Namgyal Monastery, the temple of HH the Dalai Lama, in 1993. Image source unknown.