god is in the details. i suppose that says almost everything. alas, i'm coming to fire season's end tomorrow. at least a hundred days up here and now many of them seem the same. that's how life becomes dust!
i do know how to slow myself down. one of the ways is to read haiku. absurd? here's one by buson:
In the aging house
the crooked door being straightened,
a spring-like summer day.
i swear if you read these for half an hour, you'll look up and notice little things in the room as if they were significant. not only that, you will have relaxed and slowed down. here's one by the joker issa:
Seen
through a telescope:
ten cents worth of fog.
another way of possibly becoming present is photographing. here's what my favorite photographer bill brandt says:
"It is part of the photographer's job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveller who enters a strange country."
of course, there's the joke about tourists who snap, snap, and snap, saying "I'll see the country and people when I get home." one mustn't be too eager to stop the present. after all, a photograph one split-second in the continuum of change.
ah, and then stopping to smell the flowers. everytime i go to the university rose garden and bend over a yellow beauty, i'm transported to the present. (the yellow seem to have the most magnificent smell.)
and what slows me down most of all? a walk on the beach, waves crashing, wind howling, and the gulls crying. i'll do that as soon as i can. i've grown too used to the mountain-top, the shock of recognition gone.
i have taken a few more photos. the retro abend: www.pbase.com/wwp/abend
and a last fiery look at my firetower: www.pbase.com/wwp/red
you see how different the same scenes and objects can look.
i've also posted a selected poems: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems2 i actually feel i'll stand or fall by the poetry.
