Language, Nature, Commerce
The mystery of language,
the poetic imagination,
and the mind of compassion
are roughly one and the same,…
Back On The Fire by Gary Snyder, The Path to Matsuyama, p. 60
Saturday morning, sun light filters through a high film of clouds. A light breeze brushes the surface of the retention pond just outside the back door of Starbucks. The room is relatively quiet (so far) for a Saturday morning. I just exchanged stories with John, an old friend who I have not seen for quite some time. He is working on the accounting books for his business. A small business can be appropriated as a personal work, a type of art, dynamically responding to an environment that is natural, commercial and personal.
These are different language-games, natural and commercial and personal, each is useful, a vocabulary and grammar tool for a necessary purpose. Every act, each moment has influence upon everything else. That’s the point of view, the mode of being and of mind that I wish to cultivate.
Gary Snyder expresses over and over with his prose and poetry, that I am given a role in a story that is more vast than I can comprehend. To pay attention is the sacrifice that I am obligated to return. First of all, how to allow my “monkey mind” to seek quiescence. That is, how to step-back from the jangle of propaganda dispensed from right and left.
There’s a niche of coincidence, – of rhythm, rhyme and harmony. The cadence, the lyric, and the melody – laughing together.
Finally, I placed an order on Amazon. I am curious to read The Essential Haiku by Robert Hass. Perhaps I will anchor an adult learning group in the near future. If not I’ll find company with my grand daughter to explore poetry. Poetry is both an act of resistance to the spirit of this dying age, and an act of self-care.
