Zelda's Inferno's exercise: either

* Write a poem about the "ultimate" poem, or what a poem "should" do.

or

* Write a poem using, "how to...". For example, "how to write a poem", "how to break my heart"," how to distinguish a flower from a frog".

(from http://www.davidrm.com/thejournal/tjresources-exercises.php)

the ultimate poem
should grab you by the ears and scream
the ultimate poem
leaves its brand on the brain
the ultimate poem
holds us steady to the truth (says Emerson)
the ultimate poem
will never desert you
the ultimate poem
fills you up but never slows you down
the ultimate poem
inspires other poets (so we do not mean ultimate as "last", never!)
the ultimate poem
is in the language of the people
the ultimate poem
beats a prayer
the ultimate poem
leave ambiguity but no doubt
the ultimate poem
does more for your brain than a shot of whiskey, a bong hit, strong coffee,
      and a cup of mushroom tea put together
the ultimate poem
cannot be shot down
the ultimate poem
seems familiar on the first hearing, but new at the hundredth
the ultimate poem
makes a child stop to hear it
the ultimate poem
does not call attention to itself, and for that reason it is heard
the ultimate poem
is never discussed in your high school English class
the ultimate poem
sits down and tells itself to you
the ultimate poem
speaks out for things
the ultimate poem
never gives up on you
the ultimate poem
does not discriminate on race, religion, national origin, gender,
      sexual preference, or economic class
the ultimate poem
explains itself
the ultimate poem
never apologizes
the ultimate poem
is both scholarly and common
the ultimate poem
loves everyone equally

An American citizen who was never convicted, or even indicted, of a crime has been assassinated by the U.S. government. He is the first of a list of people personally targeted for murder by Obama in the name of "national security".

The U.S. claims that Anwar al-Awlaki, a native-born American citizen, was involved with Al Qaeda, and linked him to the Fort Hood shootings and to an attempted airplane bombing. But he was not a solider or an operative, but a propagandist. He was murdered for what he said.

Sure, what he said was odious -- he called for Muslims to murder any Americans they came across. That's bad. Anwar al-Awlaki was a nasty little man who advocated terrible acts. But free speech extends even to the right to call for violence, and the question of whether Al-Awlaki's speech went over the "imminent lawless action" line is not for the President to unilaterally decide, nor is it for him to impose the death penalty for such speech.

This is a continuation of Bush era policies that called for the the CIA and military to murder U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the U.S. or its "interests". As Glenn Greenwald wrote in January 2010 when the "hit list" first came to light:

Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

Bullying kills. If you did not know that, Dan Savage blogs about Jamey Rodemeyer, a fourteen-year-old from upstate New York who apparently took his own life to escape the abuse of his peers:

It sounds like Jamey had help—he was seeing a therapist and a social worker and his family was supportive—but it wasn't enough. Whatever help Jamey was getting clearly wasn't enough to counteract the hatred and abuse that he had endured since the fifth grade, according to reports, or Jamey's fears of having to face down a whole new set of bullies when he started high school next year.

...

The point of the "It Gets Better" project is to give kids like Jamey Rodemeyer hope for their futures. But sometimes hope isn't enough. Sometimes the damage done by hate and by haters is simply too great. Sometimes the future seems too remote.

Dan's It Gets Better Project has done a lot over the past year or so to bring attention to the problem of the bullying experienced by LGBT youth. I don't want at all to take away from their work, or from the fact that LGBT youth are frequently bullied; but I think it would be good to broaden the discussion a little bit.

LGBT aren't the only ones who are bullied to the point of making them feel suicidal. I know, because thirty years or so ago I was a straight kid (despite the fact that "gaywad" and "faggot" were among my tormentors' favorite insults) who was bullied to the point of contemplating suicide.

It's hard to dredge up those memories, to think about how hurt and frightened I was for years of my life, and about what might have happened if things had gone just a bit differently. If I hadn't had a chance to make a fresh start at a distant middle school with a "gifted and talented" program, where I could escape the bullies and meet friends, at least for the school day, though coming home to the same fears and threats; if I hadn't been able to get permission -- and parental support -- to go to a high school out of my normal district; if I hadn't found the practice of karate...looking back, the path that kept me from just giving up was awfully narrow at times.

I'm feeling much better now, thanks.

The important thing is this: the kids who get bullied -- gay, bi, straight, trans, queer, whatever combination of preference and gender -- are so often the ones who grow up to become pretty damn great adults. We're strong, because we had to be to survive it. We're brave and independent, because we learned that the opinions and judgments of others are not a measure of our success. We're ready to help, because we know both how terrible it was when no one was there to help us, and how wonderful it was when someone was. And after the years of bullshit, when we get out in the world and get to have so much more of a choice of whom we associate with, we find those who can see and appreciate that strength, courage, and compassion.

And so a suicide like Jamey's isn't just a loss for those who knew him and loved him. It is a loss for us all who might have known the man he would have grown up to be if things had gone just a little bit differently.

It does get better. Not just for LGBT kids, but for all of us who are different and become the targets of insults, assaults, and harassment for it. But it takes luck and support to get through, and not everyone will find them. So as I shed a tear for Jamey Rodemeyer I also look back at my own life and think how easily that could have been me.

And if the next Jamey Rodemeyer, the next kid ready to end it all, reads this -- please, please, please, hang in there. Don't let the bastards win. Because we need the fabulous adult that you will grow in to being.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write about cigarettes or other addictions (yours or other people's)

my grandmother -- my mother's mother -- wore bright pink lipstick
shocking pink
I remember it on the cigarette butts
white stubs of Pall Malls in an orange plastic ashtray

I can't remember her smoking them
(guess she didn't want to expose my brother and me to the smoke)
but I remember the pink slashes on those bone white ends
only a few shades paler than she was

Sometimes that's all I can picture about her, all these years later:
her sitting in the kitchen smoking Pall Malls
and drinking Tab
and watching soap operas -- her "stories"

and that's not fair, of course

because she was also the grandmother who spoiled us at Christmas
had endless patience for card games
War and Go Fish and Crazy Eights and Blackjack
(yes, my grandmother taught me Blackjack)
made pies with cherries right off the tree in her backyard
(if my grandfather could harvest some before the crows got them)

but she was the first of my grandparents to die
and when I think of that
I think of bright pink lipstick on bone white cigarette butts.

Two interesting stories out of NYC today:

• 47 people were shot over this crazy holiday weekend, including three people killed and two cops wounded in a shooting near the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn. The parade often sees violence and also had fatal shootings in 2003 and 2005, but according to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly the city should not consider shutting it down -- "It's our biggest parade," he said, and because of the density of people, "you can't watch everything."
• Details are emerging about an NYPD spying operation that used federal money and an unusually close relationship with the CIA to put huge numbers of innocent people under scrutiny. More than 250 mosques and Muslim student groups in and around New York were spied upon by a secret squad known as the "Demographics Unit". Its targets included those from "ancestries of interest", including "American Black Muslim." (Which you and I know is a religion, not an ancestry, but apparently that's too complicated for the NYPD.) Several Muslim civil rights groups and a New York congresswoman have urged the Justice Department to investigate the NYPD for racial profiling.

So, the NYPD's response to real shootings -- "you can't watch everything." Its response to the "threat" of Muslims praying and talking about politics: "get me the CIA, let's get some federal money and form a spy unit!"

Does anyone else see a problem here?

A Facebook post by a friend reminded me of one of my favorite Zen stories. This comes from the Korean "Kwan Um" school of Master Seung Sahn, and is told in his books The Compass of Zen and Dropping Ashes on the Buddha. Like many Zen stories, I think that it also has relevance for students of the martial arts and many other disciplines. It goes something like this (this is my gloss on it, not a direct quote from Seung Sahn):

Three centuries ago there was a monk called Sok Du, which means “Rock-head.” As that name indicates, he was not
the most intellectually brilliant fellow. But he had a great determination, and so even though the sutras were beyond him and even sitting meditation was too intellectually challenging, he stayed at the temple doing “working Zen” – laboring in the fields and in the kitchen.

When the master of the temple tried to help him out and asked if he had any questions, Sok Du said, “Well, Master, you are always talking about Buddha. What is Buddha?”

The Zen master answered, “Buddha is mind,” which is a fairly stock Zen answer. But in Korean, “Buddha is mind” sounds a little bit like “Buddha is grass shoes.” And that’s what Sok
Du heard.

Of course this puzzled him, but he was confused by this Zen stuff most of the time anyway. So he stuck with it. “Buddha is grass shoes. Buddha is grass shoes. What’s that mean? I don’t
know, but that’s what the master said. So Buddha is grass shoes.” This was his thought, his meditation, all the time for three years. Buddha is grass shoes.

Then one day, he was out in the hills gathering firewood. As he walked down the path, he slipped and his straw sandals – his “grass shoes” – tore loose and flew up in the air! In that
instant, he had an enlightenment experience.

He went rushing back to the master. “Master! Master! I understand!”

“Oh? Well then, what is Buddha?”

And Sok Du smacked the master on the head with his broken sandal!

“Is that all?” said the master (who was probably used to uppity monks trying to show enlightenment with outrageous behavior).

“My grass shoes are all broken!”

“Ah! Wonderful!” said the master, and burst out laughing.

Knowing that intention and determination are more important than fine points of method, we don’t have to wait for a perfect teacher or perfect circumstances or perfect understanding of technique; we can begin, right now.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: freewrite on one (or more) of the following randomly-selected phrases:

the building is vacant
the awards ceremony will be held...
before children can start the year
little fried potato
year after year
information is available

the building is vacant
in this it is like my head, my heart
feeling very empty these days
which could be abandoned
or could be preparation for new tenants
no state of a building or a person is permanent
after all
to understand the present we
have to wait for the future
to come along and put it in context

vacancy is potential
the empty space of the bowl that makes it useful
the hub of the wheel, the open space inside the house
but vacancy is also the vacuum that nature --
so I am told --
abhors

and so we try to fill the empty space
the hungry ghost eating food that will not fill it
you can pour water into a cracked bucket forever
does this means it is an infinite container?
is the cracked bucket a Klien bottle, its inside its outside
already holding the universe?

so does my cracked heart already hold all?
(or is that just self-pitying self-agrandizing bullshit?
and if "self" is an illusion, what does that mean?)

the building is vacant
empty and waiting

The New York Times printed my letter to the science editor. (Any New York friends still have Tuesday's paper around and willing to hold page D4 for my scrapbook?) They trimmed it, of course, cutting out the good parts; the original version is below.

Amusing that some sort of automatic system apparently tagged "wasting" as related to muscle atrophy when they posted it to the web.

Re: "Gun Query Off Limits for Doctors in Florida" (August 9):

I'm fairly certain that firearms safety was not part of my doctor's medical training, and if she brought the topic up at my next appointment I'd be concerned about why she was wasting time on a minor threat to my health. More than four times as many people die in fires each year than in firearms accidents, yet I don't hear anyone calling matches a "public health issue".

So long as people like Dr. Marcus conflate murders and suicides by firearm with accidental deaths, people who understand the statistics will feel that they are being treated as potential murderers or suicide cases when doctors ask prying questions about firearms ownership. Firearms are just one of many potentially dangerous items in a home, and excessive focus on gun accidents reveals either ignorance of the facts or a political agenda.

Tom Swiss
Baltimore

I recently received a flier from the local neighborhood watch group, "Westchester Citizens On Patrol". I don't have anything against neighborhood watches, but I almost had to chuckle about the list of local crimes in this flier:

1. Assault and trespassing off of Norhurst Way

2. Motorcycle stolen at gunpoint off of Stonewall.

3. Murder on Meyers Drive.

4. Large rock thrown through car windshield near St. Paul’s Church and on Meyers Drive.

5. Alert from Wilkens Precinct regarding a spike in vehicle break-­‐ins

6. House egged on Norhurst Way North
...

I'm sure that folks having their house egged found it a mess and quite upsetting. But to put that in the same list with a motorcycle-jacking and a murder...that's a bit anti-climactic, to say the least.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write about place, springboarding from the following wordlist:

shove
avocado
burnt umber
ADD
dragonfly
chopsticks
frail
whoa
bumpy
spider
candlestick
brochure

avocado green appliances
in the kitchen where the frail woman stands
the wheezing refrigerator is 1970s vintage, half her age --
a wedding present from long ago

a take-out menu, a flier from the neighborhood watch
stuck to it with a dragonfly magnet
she looks at them and thinks of the story of her life as
told by what has been stuck to her refrigerator

long ago there were recipes, household hints
     columns clipped from the newspaper
then a small boy's fingerpaints
family vacation snapshots
for a rough two years, the second-notice bills
      that had to be paid as soon as money came in
wedding invitations
birth announcements

a lifetime told on a
field of avocado green