This Is It !

My friend who is a Buddhist said once after coming out of a meditation retreat, “The colors were so much more vibrant afterward.” Her meditation teacher said, “When you are present, the world is truly alive.”
—Natalie Goldberg

Be here now.
—Ram Dass

Without mindfulness and presence of mind, nothing can be accomplished.
—Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche

Thoughts of the past and future spoil your time.
—Dipa Ma

These two things must be cut away: fear of the future and the memory of past sufferings. The latter no longer concern me, and the future does not concern me yet.
—Marcus Aurelius

Present moment, wonderful moment.
—Thich Nah Hanh 

Developing a one-pointed mind …will enrich your life moment by moment. You will find that your senses are keener, your emotions more stable, your intellect more lucid, your sensitivity to the needs of others heightened. Whatever you do, you will be there more fully.
—Eknath Easwaran 

Let the soul be happy in the present, and refuse to worry about what will come later.
— Horace

There are people who do not live their present life; it is as if they were preparing themselves, with all their zeal, to live some other life, but not this one. And while they do this, time goes by and is lost. We cannot put life back into play, as if we were casting another roll of the dice.  
—Antiphon

All through high school I felt confined; imprisoned inside my blue uniform, except when I rode my bicycle to and from school, a five mile journey through fields and paddies. whenever I had time I would get off my bike in the middle of a cabbage field and take a deep breath—that was always a moment of liberation.  
—Mayumi Oda 

Death is not an event of life. It is not experienced. If by ‘eternity’ we mean not an infinite temporal duration but atemporality, then whoever lives in the present lives eternally.  
—Ludwig Wittgenstein

Share the Wealth with Jessica Flier: Words Matter – & Why I Write

In my life I’ve struggled with considering myself “a writer,“ but according to one of my favorite writers, if you write, you’re a writer. So I suppose I am!

The other thing that strikes me in this moment, as I write my self-introduction for Dr. C’s June 2021 Share the Wealth, is that I frequently surprise myself by reading something I’ve written long enough ago that I almost don’t remember writing it – and sometimes, I think, who wrote that!? That’s beautiful! 

And in those moments, I think of all the people in my life who might benefit from those particular words, and often there are at least one or two people who happen to need just those words, at just this time, and it’s in those moments that I feel like a writer.

Join us for a discussion on how the written word can offer compassion, healing, solace… Jessica will share some of her poems, explain how her writing process got her through some of her darkest days, and share stories of how the written word has brought guidance, brightness and hope.

Jessica holds a leadership position at Edward Jones, where she uses the power of words to help people dig below the surface of corporate culture to understand their intrinsic motivators and goals, in order to reach whatever potential they feel ready to achieve. Writing has been a passion of hers since she was able to hold a pencil. She lives in South St. Louis City with her two dogs, Sana & Lucy, and her boyfriend, Tim.

We gather on Sunday 27 June
7:00 p.m. Central Time
Via Zoom: email me for URL…markjchmiel@gmail.com
P.S.  Jessica studied with me at SLU in the fall of 2005, and I am grateful for her presence in my life!

Reading/743

Both M. and Akhmatova had the astonishing ability of somehow bridging time and space when they read the work of dead poets. By its very nature, such reading is usually anachronistic, but with them it meant entering into personal relations with the poet in question: it was a kind of conversation with someone long since departed. From the way in which he greeted his favorite poets of antiquity in the Inferno, M. suspected that Dante also had this ability. In his article “On the Nature of Words” he mentions Bergson’s search for links between things of the same kind that are separated only by time–in the same way, he thought, one can look for friends and allies across the barriers of both time and space. This would probably have been understood by Keats, who wanted to meet all his friends, living and dead, in a tavern.

–Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope gainst Hope

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Zosima-isms/2

Which of the two is more capable of upholding and serving a great idea—the isolated rich man or one who is liberated from the tyranny of things and habits?

Let us preserve the image of Christ, that it may shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world… So be it, so be it!

Verily, there is more dreamy fantasy  in them than in us. They hope to make a just order for themselves but, having rejected Christ, they will end by drenching the earth with blood, for  blood calls to blood, and he who draws the sword will perish by the sword. 

Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love. 

Love the animals: God gave them the rudiments of thought and an untroubled joy. Do not trouble it, do not torment them, do not take their joy from them, do not go against God’s purpose. Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals: they are sinless, and you, you with your grandeur, fester the earth by your appearance on it, and leave your festering trace behind you—alas, almost every one of us does! 

Roses and Garbage

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding:
Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra
Parallax Press, 1988

A beautiful rose we have just cut and placed in our vase is immaculate. It smells so good, so pure, so fresh. It supports the idea of immaculateness. The opposite is a garbage can. It smells horrible, and it is filled with rotten things.  But that is only when you look on the surface. If you look more deeply you will see that in just five or six days, the rose will become part of the garbage. You do not need to wait five days to see it. If you just look at the rose, and you look deeply, you can see it now. And if you look into the garbage can, you see that in a few months its contents can be transformed into lovely vegetables, and even a rose. If you are a good organic gardener and you have the eyes of a bodhisattva, looking at a rose you can see the garbage, and looking at the garbage you can see a rose. [p. 31]

In twenty years, Thich Nhat Hanh will still be with us.  But will we recognize his many forms? The Heart of Understanding will be of service in cultivating that recognition, and many others as well.  In this commentary on the Heart Sutra, based on talks during the 1980s, Nhat Hanh introduces his understanding of interbeing. 

All these decades later, this short text can help us recognize our habitual denial of interbeing, particularly when it come to U.S. politics. For example, can we remain serene and un-triggered when reading the following passages? … “In this  … situation, each side  is pretending to be the rose, and calling the other side garbage….You have to work for the survival of the other side, if you want to survive yourself….do not hope that you can eliminate the evil side. It’s easy to think that we are on the good side. And that the other side is evil….We are not separate. We are inextricably interrelated.   The rose is the garbage.”

Share the Wealth Sunday 6 June: The Joy of Letter-Writing

For this gathering I invite you to join me in sharing  about our experiences of sending and receiving mail through the USPS. 

The idea for this Share came a few days ago from when Andrew Wimmer passed on an article to me from the website Counterpunch. It’s an interview with Laura Nader on her new book, Letters to and from of an Anthropologist.   At the end of the interview, Dr. Nader stated, “We have lost the art of letter writing, but I think it will come back.”

I can attest that the art of letter writing is alive and well. To give  one example (among many I could cite) —several years ago I received a twelve-page, hand-written letter from a young teacher in Washington D.C.

A fair amount of material in my last major writing project, Dear Love of Comrades, consists of letters. (It’s available at my Facebook page.)

If Liz Burkemper comes, I will gently try to “pull” from her to describe her way of designing her own envelopes.

If Andrew Ivers comes, I will ask permission to share the screen to show one of his typewriter-generated gems.

Join us
Sunday 6 June
7:00 p.m. Central Time
For URL email me

P.S.  Years ago, I did a course called Epistolary Ecstasy, where we spent eight weeks being mindful about our correspondence.  A lot of fun.  For a taste of such ecstasy, see my culling from the letters of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac: https://holditall.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/epistolary-ecstasy/

Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Subversive Art of Poetry: A Summer Reading and Writing Class

Where are Whitman’s wild children,
where the great voices speaking out
with a sense of sweetness and sublimity,
where the great, new vision,
the great world-view,
the high prophetic song
of the immense earth
and all that sings in it

—Lawrence Ferlinghetti,  Populist Manifesto

 

Glory in the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will.
Generate collective joy in the face of collective doom.
Liberate have-nots and enrage despots.
Don’t put down the scholastics who say a poem should have wholeness, harmony, radiance, truth, beauty, goodness.
Stash your sell-phone and be here now.
Don’t ever believe poetry is irrelevant in dark times.
Dare to be a non-violent poetic guerrilla, an anti-hero.
Temper your most intemperate voice with compassion.

—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, selected lines from Poetry as a Subversive Art

 

Dear Friends, 

This summer I invite you to join me in engaging the work and life of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, author of A Coney Island of the Mind (a million copies sold), publisher of world influential books (Allen Ginsberg’s Howl), owner of the Bay Area countercultural HQ, City Lights Books, a painter since the 1940s, and a translator (his translation of Jacques Prévert’s Paroles is a classic). 

Ferlinghetti died earlier this year and I recalled first reading him with appreciation in the 1980s during the the Reagan administration (his selected poems collected in Endless Life).  I later learned that he, too, had ventured to Nicaragua, target of Reagan’s terrorist wrath, like I and several friends from Louisville (Seven Days in Nicaragua Libre).  I cheerfully purchased his paperbacks  over the decades (published principally by New Directions) and always found new poems and perspectives to provoke and inspire me. I lived in Berkeley and Oakland in the 1990s and often visited North Beach to pop in at City Lights. Since 2015 I’ve done classes on poets such as Alice Walker, Diane di Prima, Allen Ginsberg, and Anne Waldman, and it’s high time I offer something on Ferlinghetti!

I imagine a group of us meeting weekly for two months,  having equal time for reading, writing and sharing.  I propose starting Monday 21 June at 7 p.m. Central Time. Each session should go for at least 90 minutes. If the only people interested in the class  are from St. Louis, I will attempt to arrange a place for our sessions.  If others from elsewhere in the USA and beyond are wanting to be a part of this, I am happy to utilize Zoom.  Following is some useful info—

• I strongly recommend you purchase LF’s Poetry as a Subversive Art.
• During the summer I encourage you  to go to City Lights online and order any  City Lights Publishers book that looks interesting to you.  You could start by browsing the Pocket Poet Series.
• I may ask you to watch online (somehow) the 2009 documentary, Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder.
• We will do free writing inspired by Ferlinghetti poems  during class sessions as well as during the week.  So, you’ll need a journal (a Fabriano or an old-fashioned $2 composition notebook) or a device, as you like.
• I invite people to zero in on a creative cultural project you’d like to  initiate during our class (or work on finishing one you have already started) .
• Tuition is $125 and you can mail a check to me  (4514 Chouteau Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110) or use the following email at Paypal.

Let me know  if you are interested:

markjchmiel@gmail.com

Feel free to forward this to any of our mutual friends who may be intrigued.

Palms together,

Mark

 

 

 

 

What a Wedding’s Good for

With its three major conflicts brewing
(“you’re on my side, aren’t you?”)

And seven minor ones simmering
(“he was a loser then, he’s even worse now”)

The bride’s burning eyes
(“there’s only one way to look at this”)

The groom’s wearied ears
(“she was always that way… I remember when she was five, she…”)

The snarkiness about who’s not a bridesmaid
(“I see she follows the Mafia principle when it comes to friendship”)

The uncle and aunt bragging nonstop about their son the super-neurosurgeon
(“he made $500,000 last year, did I tell you?”)

The expense, the ego, the display
(“we’re keeping it simple; we only invited 650”)

Each and every hour of it—
This is all for your mindfulness practice

This, That, and the Other

1.

An excerpt from my 2015 novel, Dear Layla/Welcome to Palestine:

Corporate Citizen/1 (Products/2)

Some things changed and some didn’t on September 11
It shocked and angered us
To see products we had built to connect people for peaceful purposes
Used for acts of terror and destruction
Many nations joined the United States in waging war against terrorism
Boeing products —
Fighter aircraft,
Smart bombs,
Missiles,
Helicopters,
Heavy airlift,
In-flight refueling tankers and satellites —
Were deployed to protect the peace

How reassuring
To know that
Boeing is the patriotic creator
Of products to protect the peace
Pursued so selflessly by the United States

Reading in Prison

1.

At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes—until the guard approached again. That went on until three or four every morning. Three or four hours of sleep a night was enough for me. Often in the years in the streets I had slept less than that…

Book after book showed me how the white man had brought upon the world’s black, brown, red, and yellow peoples every variety of the sufferings of exploitation. I saw how since the sixteenth century, the so-called “Christian trader” white man began to ply the seas in his lust for Asian and African empires, and plunder, and power. I read, I saw, how the white man never has gone among the non-white peoples bearing the Cross in the true manner and spirit of Christ’s teachings—meek, humble, and Christlike…

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.

—The Autobiography of Malcom X