" . . . and once again I am a singer in one of the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher."

— Leonard Cohen, from "The Book of Mercy"

"From there, you will have a bored gorilla."

NOTE: A bored deity is a DANGEROUS deity!

I arrived in Keene, NY as a guest of 2 co-madres and partners in Conscious Shadow League on March 13, 2020 and as we were pulling in to the drive-way after the 6 hour drive listening to bulletin after bulletin of the covid plague descending upon nation and world, driving down the long dirt driveway to the house we heard Governor Cuomo officially SHUT DOWN New York State with mandated masks, gloves, etc. Trump shut the nation down very soon after (I think that was the order of how it went down) .I had intended to be in Keene for 2 weeks early spring break but as and it turned out, I spent the entire tsunami of c19 in Keene then returned to East Village, NYC in mid-November.

I must say honestly that I LOVED being in those high mountains for such a long stay. I worked remotely with clients so continued to work. Mail was forwarded to the Keene post office. I phone paid bill and mailed the rent by Express Mail, etc. Worked out very fine.

While in Keene, I spent many an hour in a park, Footbridge Park, in the town of Elizabethtown, NY, a quiet lovely settlement about a 12 miles drive from my friends driveway.

Rarely was there more than 2 people at the park at the same time when I was in my second office (picnic table). A lot of dog walkers, moms pushing baby carriage, eyes out for any person in the vicinity and ready to back away, mask up, etc. But mostly I "owned" the park and its Boquet River, "the steepest...n New York State. It drops more than 2,700 feet from its source on Dix Mountain to Lake Champlain."

As one can imagine, Autumn begins early upstate, close to Quebec (French Canadien music on the a.m. radio), so lysergic mountains and vales induce the color spectrum's vivid side, as we as wonder, joy, ecstasy, humility, praise, and much much more. I would return to my ground floor digs with leaves, boughs, river rocks, tree knots, brook work bottle glass. Loved to forage at the park, the woods there and in the river, shallow by the park where a literal footbridge crossed with a steep staircase other side leading to the E-town hospital and a faster walk into town near the grocery store, court house, school, et al.

At the park, actually everywhere I sent, my camera was very very busy. A number of shots are here on my FB page.

This shot below is taken from my E-town office "desk" - aka picnic table, silver sheen from ages of hotter sun and the more potent rays since the elevation is higher cuz "Adirondacks" (Mount Marcy's just behind, well, LOOMING behind, the smaller mounts extending from it, one of those, say, 40 yards behind the house.

There upon, the Footbridge desk/table, as well as in the ground floor apartment I lived in I reread yet and yet again my tried and true masters of poetry, Theodore Roethke, James Wright, Chaz Olson, the "Creel's", Spicer (LOVE), and Lorca, Rilke, Hopkins, Leonard Cohen, Philip Whaten (a delight to read, his zen ear and eye, his humor and grand capacity to surprise into basho (means "place"), surprise, and pathos without boo hoo but heart breaking in two & two - and so many more poets all kinds..

I continued zen (and varietals - it's prone to branching (as it should but cannot help but do) for all its intention to achieve the One not One which conjures the many so get a good pair of skates to wheel in, through, upon, away, over, under the rumored to be Zen Way of many ways through the gait-less gait.

I studied/read and zafu-sat aka 3 pillows stacked on top of each other purchased from the Dollar Store in E-town,; I'll have you to know that the Buddha would NOT frown at my cheap three layered sn-afu meditation cushion-cake which served (and serves still these 6 years hence) to at least keep my mind somewhat focused/refocused - aka FAT CHANCE - MY zen is FAT CHANCE ZEN - where often, in Keene, now in NYC, visions of Preparation H spontaneously presented/present because of prolapsed zen sitz, I mean, sits in/with/upon my (covid year) late 60's year old body, so sitting too long reminded me, insistently, of impermanence (why can't I remember how to spell the damned word?), of the body and it's functioning for 6-decades- plus "machinery" -

I wonder, though, did Siddhartha Gautama, 

Der Buddha, have "rhoiids" from his seven

years not budging from the Bodhi Tree?

KATZ! (and I hear some snickering from the small fake gold traveling Buddha who travels with me).

Enlightenment can happen anywhere at anytime and it may be "mini' by "maxi" flashes that accrue then one day

ACHOO!

becomes/brings on

AH SO (as*hole in tact or trying).

*

This Zen koan, very famous one, asks over and over, and the sitz-er monk has to come up with their own response from pondering itn....but this famous one points to zen's embracing of

irreverence aka NATURE at work:

What is Buddha-nature?

A DRIED SHIT STICK !(which was what folks used back in the olden of days).

My favorite zen tale because it is so psychological (Jungian re: shadow and, yes, shadow work even for the Zen Abbot:

One Note of Zen

The Most Valuable Thing in the World » Eating the Blame

Circumstances arose one day which delayed preperation of the dinner of a Soto Zen master, Fukai, and his followers. In haste the cook went to the garden with his curved knife and cut off the tops of green vegetables, chopped them together and made soup, unaware that in his haste he had included a part of a snake in the vegetables.

The followers of Fugai thought they never tasted such good soup. But when the master himself found the snake’s head in his bowl, he summoned the cook. “What is this?” he demanded, holding yo the head of the snake.

“Oh, thank you, master,” replied the cook, taking the morsel and eating it quickly.

http://successkey-101zenstories.blogspot.com/2008/04/69-eating-blame_27.html

*

And this other tale presents bold female ZEN having none of the 2-faced zen or gender zen aka men are better at it or or or or boring but stubborn zen

but it's all grist for the zen mind millstone in the all male zen school the zen nun is in

(all religions, truth be told, cannot exist without the 2-faces (good/evil, male/female, etc., it's the dialectic in one flavor West or East or other):

5. If You Love, Love Openly

Twenty monks and one nun, who was named Eshun, were practicing meditation with a certain Zen master. Eshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her dress plain. Several monks secretly fell in love with her. One of them wrote her a love letter, insisting upon a private meeting. Eshun did not reply. The following day the master gave a lecture to the group, and when it was over, Eshun arose. Addressing the one who had written to her, she said:

"If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now."

**

And a pre-zen, pre-Jungian analysis, pre-move to NYC for both and massive doses of neccesary shadow work poem....but it's, zennish-esque enough with 'murrain fluff there in ,

this writ, say 1980, on my 28th birthday, Saturn Return already kicking in, kicking my ass hard which led to my moving to NYC on a whim in '82, from a sliver of Huckleberry Mountain to West 142nd Street Harlem NY....arriving there January 2nd, one of two gringos in a totally Korean (South) house hold brown stone beside a Hispanic Pentecostal church! and a house full of zen monks east of the brownstone. So, yeah. And the Koreans were Calvinistic Christians! So glad I found a Jungian analyst to begin working with a month after I arrived not knowing what to expect.

WOWZA.

Definitely NOT in Kansas anymore. And the Trickster God, God IS THE TRICKSTER, THE COSMIC JOKE AND (GUT)PUNCHLINE

But seriously, folks.

Again, a Blue Ridge early attempt at a poem, and the question's within it, zen with it, and fundamentalist despair but at least out of all than outwardly and dealing (and failing) with it inwardly.

Context/cornflakes:

I ate Chinese food on my birthday and my fortune cookie conveyed (see second line):

Delusion Of One

Born: Year of the Dragon.
Horoscope: 'Today's the lucky day.'

Luck, you say? O.K. Once. In a small town
on a snowy road, the scenery spinning round.
When it stopped you were pointing toward a good
place - Home. The message: Go back.
You can decide again to begin again
or stay warm there:

Wombtown, population: 1.

No Lions Club or local Jaycees.
No chocolate bars and brooms for the blind.
Free room and board. It's kick and dream,
kick and dream and cleanliness more efficient
than a space suit. Talk about luck!

You're here aren't you? Don't say good or bad.
It's no accident the year's the Dragon's.
Chinese or no, the year has a tail long as a river.
Peel the scales behind the ears
you'll still roar for pain o roaring boy
spinning in the world, the recurring dream
of vortices whirling pink and red, a large
mouth with teeth spitting you into
an even muddier river. You'd fish it
if you could. More likely you'd dam it
at the source. The occasional catch is
more likely snag in undertow.

It's undertow that matters.
The real power's there.
Ask the undertow, you'll get answers.
Don't say need. The bottom's filled
with old cars, tin cans, bad seed.
All you'll ever want. Get lucky.

This is the day.

The glass on the window's steamed.
Outside's a blur.

What's that gone by spinning with rustling wings,
roaring like wind, glint of mirrors hurling down?

You'd swearthere was a splash.

Something's pointing,

Go back.

**

And a surrealiistic zennish "Murikin pome/mondo" (a NYC early computer find, Dell of the 800 pound modern, and the marvelous electronic gurgle and hiccough sound it made when "thinking" and me talking amongst my many selves waiting for attention on the monitor blue screen, in the dark the entire room blue, too.

How Do You Make The Gorilla Com On Pocket God? (Sic) - A Found Poem

Light the torches using lightning,
place one islander on that central beacon

(he'll stick there spread eagle) .

Then, place one islander on
the drums on the right side,
and one on the crank on the left.

Their eyes will glow red.

Make sure it is night time,
then in a circular motion with
your finger, make the possessed
little dude on the left turn the crank,
spreading the hapless guy in the middle out

... but JUST until the little lights on
the bottom of the altar turn on...

crank too far and he'll explode.

THEN, FINALLY, lightly tap the
drums under the islander on the right...
and voila.

King Kong will eat the guy on the altar.

From there, you will have a bored gorilla.

[this is me, not the poem -

NOTE: A bored deity is a DANGEROUS deity]

*

And a Keene covid19 refugee poem,
zen again, and zen some:

Z-ENTRY ZEN TRY — Day 13:

Sensei tells me:

It's undertow that matters.

I am stumped.

One adjusts. Continually.

The persona is adaptation
appearing to be solid but sleep reveals the neutrality
of the animal.

Dreams tell us otherwise
when we remember them as it takes an ego to witness,
to remember.

They reveal that we are
caught up into something so much greater than
flush and stir.

It's a wonder we make do
as much as we do and still
call ourselves by name, a
species of animal,

homo sapiens.

I regret self pity.

I'd reject it if I could but it adheres,
last resort of old coots born honestly
into it no matter the copious Mercurochrome
baths, the smelling salts obviating the needed nipple.

The stippled trout I nightly catch,
pink insides turned out by blue
blade kept beneath the pillow

baits me with the riddle
again and again -

Something about a stand of trees,
a man carving some bark,
what breath is for.

Today the Market reports a run on Mercurochrome.

Birth goes on.

I am for rebirth.

A dirth of days makes me suddenly Hindu
foregoing gurus and a bindu point.

I've made my own here,
one foot well into 'Cracked and Crank',
the drunk tank a memory
worn out.

Doubt is my companion.

Love, too.
No remorse here.

Buys me time, aftershave, and
loads of underwear for the trickles ahead.

Thank the gods for all that.

Oh. And one last good cigar.

*

Post Script:

Given the ongoing nightmare of human
(first world = worst world) willful insanity and Chaos,

I'm switching to
GROUCHO MARX Zen viz:

YOU SAID TH' WOID
YOU GOT TH' VOID

Indubitably

*

Considered by some to be Leonard Cohen's most Buddhist poem...wadda ye think it may be if not this one...I know it's been played to marana (death - in Pali & Sanskrit):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN7Hn357M6I

"It is enough. It pretends the miracle of never falling" —from the disaster notes, a journal kept off and on around this day since 9/11, the EVENT

"…descend…and of the curveship lend a myth…" —Hart Crane

World Trade Tower 

(I own no rigths to this photo)

[from the disaster notes, a journal kept off and on around this day since the EVENT - not perfect cuz daily scrawled half-asleep waiting for espresso to kick in so….]

from 

 

[][]_____Le Funambule*____[][]

 

Disaster Journals - 9/11

*The Rope Walker

"Those that believe in the evidence of empty space argue that nothing can be in motion unless there were empty space for it to fall in . . . Melissus accepts the argument that movement implies the existence of the void. . . " —from Aristotle's "Testimonia"

I agree with Melissus. Ironically, VOID IS. Words are funny that way - O say can you see…

- for J. who fell that day - tightrope walker, dancer, eye glancer where I once and forever fell continually onto soft landings. My demands are over. I find you now in clover beds behind the Metropolitan, Temple of Dendor overlooking our search for the rare four-leaved still-common flower. You are uncommon always to me. I am the grateful commoner once supplicant at your heart's many chambered door. I am content enough 

Look! 

no wobbling! no net!

the tent walls tremble,

for us he

pretends the

miracle of never falling.

**

Journal entries dates removed:

"This day again, that day I slept in (being a "server" so it was not hard to "lie abed" as my Malaysian friend says), and missed the event but woke at 1 pm, made coffee then noticed that my answering machine was flashing red red red and the entire cassette was full. What? Took a few minutes to rewind - but the day cannot yet be rewound no matter how often we see it or, late night, are compelled to watch the 3 hours of its sudden beginning, the Picasso-like "impress" on the first building airplane angled in, or perhaps Derain or Cezanne daubs but pastel hues blue, gray, dark gray for where structure remained, hints of it, while edifice bore brunt of the "brute brush" stroke into smoke and where there is smoke there is inevitable ash with which a city adorns to mourn.

Even tho the event seems distant, clients still bring in dreams of the ruins, walking over them, bent steel beams over abyss that hopefully lead out of the mess, or over the river or bay, or stuck there on the balance beam in a twisted way glancing nervously up at sky for more planes or the rest of what hasn't fallen to fall...discovering that it is the nation in an infinitely slo mo fall still, grandiosity has no set speed when it falls, it can explode, shatter, or burn burn so,

let El Greco paint a New York City sky that burns eyes 

and throats, chemical scent was still in the air conditioner 

filter for a year after the event.  

Turn it on and down they come, 

the jumpers, 

the countless pages

(are there angels whose jobs are to count exactly how many pages burned in the fires, 

how many scraps action painted, say, Kline or Pollock, between buildings, past windows, on rooftops, water towers mocking their sudden elevation in height 

confusing buffeting scraps for pigeons, but knowing quickly that something was wrong when 

sudden flocks of crows gathered at the site, the cavernous hole choking still on einfalle, 

its arrogant declaration still absurd 2 decades later, that MONEY/MARKET rules. But, 

you may accurately point out, IT DOES, have only to ask any fool and they know that it, the gelt, rules 

even though human flesh melts, disintegrates in 10 seconds as do 3 floors of twin buildings that suddenly 

know how to spell M e r c u r y, the Trickster, he whose name is where we get the very words 

"market"    "merchant"    "mercantile"    "merchandise" 

to name a few.

Conversion On The Road To Damascus

— Caravaggio

So, indeed, Tricksters flew, Mercury with His winged feet, protector of thieves and 

of those who are robbed by thieves, and He is subject to His own medicine, shape shifts a

nd finds out what/who He becomes....and World Trade, yes, Market/Money/Thieves et. al.

Can't make this shit up but can 

bring 

down 

the 

TT-owers.

So, the daily Swamp Singer sends poems today about THAT day, when I pull Tarot cards on that day and now years later and get major arcana aka the Wheel of Fortune card meets the Lightning Struck Tower card meets the Judgement Card imaging Archangel Gabriel blowing His Horn while, beckoned, dead, naked, humans rise up from their graves in order to give account, Last Judgement, of tiny little lives that seem, so it is insisted in Abrahamic religions, seem to "chap God's ass" so much that even the presumed "peace" (= certain surcease) of death is disrupted for further terrors aka that of God,THAT trauma, sez Jung, "God is a trauma", he's painting in broad strokes, telling it straight out, that the day of Shouting, 

that of Resurrection, is not exclusively a promise for Glory

(etymology of "glory" is from Greek "doxa" (the word "doxology" which a hymn of praise sung in Churches,means, going way way back in earlier usage, "reputation")

because gore seems to feed the sacred just as much as glory so - there is that.

EVIL

from whence it came and still doth come
Dum TEE dum-dum DUMMMM

a Fruit (Apple) tree "set up" (more to come)

from the beginning. At the beginning  

Who's really to blame?  

Semaphore signals

Calling Cain.  

Calling Job.  

Calling Jonah. 

And on and on 

and on-ah.

And, to conclude with the Bard,

"the world wags on" despite a  

new and very tempting tower 

(TIK TOK) 

close to South Ferry, its (not smoke, not yet) all mirrors to reflect, to deflect GPS planes intent on painting yet another Greco or Munch, another open-mouthed eyes-wide silent scream soundtracked by jet engines screaming at highest velocity, another paint brush thrusting at glass canvas, hard on the outside, soft with flesh in the middle, 

Counting Angels Legions poised';

I once heard painter Roger Bacon, 20th Century artist of despair, tell an interviewer, who asked, about his relationship to canvas -

"I do no paint.  

I HIT!"

Photo [tilted left] by Mario Novac

[I own no rights to this photo]

Today, 9/11 2024, I woke up and while "lying abed" said a complete Rosary on my 10 fingers, arthritic, offering their pain for Jesus's and His Mother's sorrows, finger prayers, not beads, on purpose making mental note to ask if ever given the opportunity, the Angel in charge of counting fingers, how many were lost and how were found, and not, how many are still on the hollowed/hallowed ground or beneath it. How many lost fingers are there unaccounted for, unclaimed.

A sudden image, all these fingers, handless, but painting, as school children do, on any, each and every surface of or above "the Site" or at night, the perpetual orange glow is canvas enough to easily impress, a sky of finger prints only, countless (but for angels in charge of keeping tabs of dabs, daubs, the curves and turns of one finger, unique to itself tho partaking of "fingerness", same for all the others at work leaving cave wall like cyphers, little nests, or labyrinths through which future souls may use as maps once freed of/from matter.

Or - thread counts they are, too. Finest sheet for such nightly shrouding, there at day too but then the thin web is not seen, no sheen but sunshines through like Gabriel's glory on that Day when, too, tops of every skyscraper become mouths of Trumpets while somewhere graves open and "the dead shall be," are "raised incorruptible".

As all those fingers raise too,

follow the sky map they nightly make to reunite with the rest of remains returning without scars or deformities since archetype rules, primal patterns that LAW and lord over disaster ('bad star' the meaning of the word), disintegration, dismembering, and the Whole, never seamless, always a tear, a stray thread for imperfection is required for there is no Wholeness ever without it, fingers and other parts, angels writing names of those who were scattered on that day and who died from that day after the plummet.

So do say implicate psalms yet to be written but are always "in the works" and are noted, stored, given report of to the the Committee Heads to "better the feathered choirs" always chorusing, a muzak of sorts, They who do what They do which is Mystery (math appears to always be involved in every single thing) but we, I, mortal, can conjecture or at least imagine Their meetings, and those to Whom the Committee report and then make sense of and organize and arrange Fate and such.

Busy Busy.

Is there money in the abstract (money is abstract, is symbol, as too is heaven and facsimiles as similes and metaphor -

wherever, in whatever there there that is
where "They" are in (if They are a They
and are capable of "In-ness")? "

*

Mercifully, an end to some entries.

**

All photos are by W. Falcon except the World Trade Tower, the Caravaggio, and the photo by Mario Novac.

[CLICK ON PHOTOS TO SEE ENLARGED] 

**

Selfie snapped in woods walk 

covid days - Spruce Brook Farm

Keene, New York