Overcast, Rain Coming
Waking I took the measure of my blood sugar. 50 mg/dcl was quite low, a partial explanation for my mental fog. NPR reported the death of Anthony Bourdain at 61 years of age this morning. My sense of malaise deepened. Bourdain was a superb story teller, a man who appreciated the rapture of fine food. He had a genuine interest in others. I felt his compassion for those who “did something” for their living, understood as work, labor. He knew firsthand the rigors of working in a hot kitchen. He understood the chaos, the discipline and the love that is requisite upon all who perform well in this environment. He will be missed by millions who were inspired by his story telling on CNN. Anthony committed suicide.
Sometimes I think that we in the West (America) are committing suicide. I hardly need to mention the President, a marginally literate individual, posing as a businessman, coming from a tawdry career as a failed casino magnate —is to “negotiate” with the ruler of North Korea on the matter of nuclear weapons. The President admits to little preparation. He says that “right attitude” is more important than preparation. Ergo, enough of us are so disaffected, so despairing of the condition of our lives, that we elected this man to represent us…… Historians will look back upon our time. Will they “find the body” and conclude, –suicide?
On a different note, I begin reading Gary Snyder’s great collection of poems, Mountains and Rivers Without End. I have been reading a book of scholarly essays, A Sense of the Whole ed Mark Gonnerman as preparation for the read of Snyder’s collection of poems.
Here are some fragments from the essays.
- the imagination: freedom in pursuit of communion
- to forge/reveal new connections, voluntary incarnations of other beings
- the extension of identity which we call communion
- profound acceptance of impermanence
- the wrack and welter of change
- a coincidence is a spiritual pun -Arthur Koestler
- meta-pherein (Greek) a metaphor is that which brings us across
