Something my friend Heather Kyle posted this morning: ‎"To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust that, that fulfillment will come, is quite possibly one of the most powerful "magic skills" that human beings are capable of. It has been noted by almost every ancient wisdom tradition." -- Elizabeth Gilbert

So, that hits me square in the heart right now on a personal level, for reasons some of my friends know.

But it also taps into a general concept that's been floating in my head for a while, at least since Starwood, which I'm filing under the phrase "the quiet side of magic."

Magic, according to crazy ol' Uncle Aleister, is "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." A similar definition is Dion Fortune’s one, oft quoted by Starhawk, that magic is "the art of changing consciousness at will."

The idea of active change is at the heart of these definitions. But lately I've begun to wonder if we're not neglecting the yin side of magic, if by a focus on active change we're missing the more subtle sort of transformation that comes from contemplation and from deep listening.

On the archetypical level, the Magician is the holder of the secret knowledge. How do you get secret knowledge? Ya gotta listen. Even the most active of the archetypes, the Warrior, knows the necessity of listening and observation. Sun Tzu tells of the importance of using spies to listen to the enemy, that "what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge", while Musashi tells us that we must "Nurture the ability to perceive the truth in all matters" and "Be aware of those things which cannot be easily seen with the eye."

But these still suggest that listening is a preparation for action. More and more I'm thinking of the ways that listening itself transforms us. (If we truly listened to the enemy...how long would they remain our enemy?)

And maybe sitting quietly with a yearning can also transform us.

So, I'm trying to listen better. (Yeah, I know: needs improvement!) And I'm trying -- I'm trying hard -- to sit patiently with this yearning, to trust that it's not merely an attachment-to-desire-that-leads-to-suffering, but instead an opening and a guiding.

I recently stumbled across a quote from Hermann Hesse: "[W]e have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness."

What a magic, then, it would be to learn to listen to that homesickness.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: from http://www.jacarandapress.org/writing/poetry/simile.shtml

part I: fill in the blanks of the similes provided

as blue as a saxophone solo
as rough as a rumble strip
as lonely as the first star of the evening
as tall as a basketball star
as talkative as a babbling brook
as eager as a new kid on the team
crying like a hawk
praying like an old Catholic woman
reliable as an American car from the 1980s
as expensive as designer sneakers
as mad as the latest know-nothing politics
milling around like gnats flying on a summer evening
common as sand
regular as someone who eats lots of fiber
as pretty as the last flower in a field
as reluctant as the groom at a shotgun wedding
as smooth as glass
as quick as a match catching fire
running like water down the gutter
creeping like a vine
[there are more in the original, we shortened the list for time]

part II: mix them up

regular as sand
common as someone who eats lots of fiber
as smooth as a match catching fire
as quick as glass
praying like an American car from the 1980s
reliable as an old Catholic woman
as rough as gnats flying on a summer evening
milling around like a rumble strip
running like the first star of the evening
as lonely as water down the gutter
running like a vine
creeping like water down the gutter
as pretty as the first star of the evening
as lonely as the last flower in a field
praying like a match catching fire
as quick as an old Catholic woman
as smooth as a saxophone solo
as blue as glass

part III: craft poem(s) from the mixed similes:

a composite portrait of several women I have known

as pretty as the first star of the evening and
as lonely as the last flower in a field
everyone turns to watch as she goes by
turning like a compass needle pulled by a magnet

she walks as smooth as a match catching fire
talks as smooth as a bebop saxophone solo
everybody digs her but almost no one really gets her
she just might be the first of her kind

I may be wrong, but from the leaden, academic prose of Professor Ernie Lepore's "Poetry, Medium and Message", I suspect that the good professor is not a poet.

I don't merely mean that he's not a published poet, or not a critically-acclaimed poet, or not a good poet (three very different things, by the way!); I mean that I have the sneaking suspicion that the idea of writing a poem fills him with the same sort of dread that the idea of drawing a picture inspires in me, or that the idea of public speaking inspires in the average American.

It's okay to not be a poet, of course, just as its okay to not be an artist or a musician or a bricklayer or a parent. But if I were to write about painting or masonry or parenting, I would certainly consult an artist or a bricklayer or a parent, and pay heed to what they say.

I'd love to have Lepore come out to Zelda's Inferno, our weekly poetry workshop, for a couple of weeks to learn what poetry is about. Instead, he cites poets only to claim that they cannot possibly mean what they say. He rejects the idea that "form shapes content", and claims that the distinguishing feature of poetry is its attention to "articulations", the linguistic sounds (or marks, but in poetry sound dominates) by which a piece is transmitted, and that "the poet wants to draw the audience's attention to these articulations as much as to the ideas the words so articulated express."

In support of his claim that "[t]he poet does not first intuit her object and then find an appropriate medium in which to articulate it...rather...through a chosen medium that the poet intuits the object in the first place", he cites not a poet, but another academic philosopher. Would it not be more fitting to ask a poet, "Pardon me, good sir or lady, but when you write about a flower or a mountain or a lover, do you intuit the object of your poem first and then become poetic about it later (though perhaps only a moment later), or do you initially apprehend the object via poetry?"

Zelda's Inferno exercise: this one was inspired by a passage in Another Roadside Attraction, which I've recently re-read:

"This next chapter begins with the image of a Greyhound bus streaking through a rural valley in the American West. That image is, in my humble estimation, an excellent on with which to begin a chapter (unless one is writing an epic of the Civil War) and I am gratified to have an opportunity to use it. Amanda came in just now to borrow a match for the lighting of incense and candles. I told her about the image with which this chapter begins.

"Good," she said.

"I think that's an excellent beginning image," I said.

"It's fine," agreed Amanda. "You sure you haven't seen the wooden matches?"

"It's just about as good a beginning image as anyone could come up with," I said. I was feeling cocky about my bus and my valley.

Amanda stopped searching for the matches and looked me over. "Yes, Marx,", she said. "One could begin a chapter with an image of feats performed by fairies or an image of immunity from certain disasters or an image of the moonstone and its properties or an image of Don Ambrosio's pact with the Devil or an image of Chinese court dogs in moments of leisure or an image of the origins of virginity or an image of an owl flying in an open window and perching on Picasso's easel or an image of the unexplained appearance of gypsies in Europe in the fifteenth century or an image of what J.H. Fabre in The Life of the Caterpillar called the 'Great Peacock evening.' But you have chosen to begin with a bus and a valley and that is wonderful. Now, where are the fucking matches, dear? I've got my trance to attend to."

Use one of those images to begin a poem.

the feats performed by fairies

consider, if you will, the feats performed by fairies

I don't mean no little Tinkerbell

no delicate Victorian winged flower fairies

I mean the beautiful and terrible fey

the half-fallen angels, if some tales are believed

the child-swapping, bewitching nobility of the forest

the inventors of glamour

those who passed leaves and stones off as gold and gems

on many an unwary man

consider, if you will, the subtle ways

they have adapted to the modern world --

surely you do not think the fair folk have left us?

for I danced with them just last night

hidden now among us

from time to time they gather

in the forest, in the desert, in some field

at a dancehall, an art gallery, a theatre

bewitching mortals to convene with them

bewitching us to act and dress like them --

a camouflage of sorts

but look quick and careful

and you might spot the fey among the freaks

the dancer whose body cannot be that light

the man whose eyes are just a bit too bright

the child with words wise far beyond her years

the musician whose instrument brings forth tones

          beyond their hands --

the fey are among us

According to CNN, Alex Trebek, 71-year-old host of famous quiz show "Jeopardy", ruptured an Achilles tendon while chasing a burglar out of his hotel room early Tuesday. First, I wish him a speedy recovery, and second, not only is the guy still working at 71, he's chasing down crooks -- this has to make him the most awesome game show host ever.

There's an aikido group that meets over at the Baltimore Zen Center, Sword Mountain, that I've heard good things about. Since they train on Tuesday and Thursday nights -- the same nights I teach karate -- I've never been able to drop by and check them out in person. But their website has a very interesting description of the relationship between martial arts and Zen: "Aikido is Zen practice under duress, the study of one's self within the context of physical threat".

"Zen practice under duress." I think that we could very much apply that to Seido karate. For those who aren't familiar with Seido, our founder, Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura, very deliberately integrated Zen meditation into our practice.

Having "fallen off the cushion" many times over the years, I've found that some of us need something a little less subtle than shikantaza ("just sitting"). We hard-headed folks need that element of "duress", some literal smacks upside the head to help us wake up. It took me many years of practicing Karate Zen before I was prepared enough to develop a somewhat-reliable zazen (seated meditation) practice, as minimal as it is. Your mileage may vary, of course: I'm an exceptionally unsubtle guy.

On the other hand, perhaps training in "Zen under duress" has the advantage of a more robust result. It's one thing to sit on a cushion in a quiet zendo with incense burning, but how is your practice out in the noisy, stinky, always-pushing-your-buttons world? Karate Zen or Aikido Zen introduces that element of difficulty right from the start.

As an instructor, I'm now at the point where I'm often providing that "duress" for others. For example, last Saturday we had two students testing for promotion at my sensei's dojo, including one young lady testing for her advanced brown belt. This is the last test she'll take here in Maryland -- her shodan test will be at our Honbu (headquarters) in New York City -- so it's something of a big deal. My job, while sparring with her during the kumite portion of her test, was to push her out of her comfort zone, mentally as well as physically; not just to test her fighting ability, but to show her that she's stronger than she thinks, that she can keep her center even under difficult conditions.

That's a lesson she can, hopefully, carry into every aspect of her life.

So here's the irony: I bought this banged up Ovation ("the Big Coleslaw Container", as Bob Pyle put it -- and no, his song isn't about my specific guitar) back in 1994 or 95 so because I had a sentimental attachment to my Gibson, my uncle's old guitar, and I was reluctant to take it out where it might be damaged. (The Gibson is older than I am, a 68 I believe.)

I then proceeded to take that Ovation out to many parties and open mics and jams with friends, then to paid gigs, then to Japan, as well as to Starwood, FSG, and PDF. I've busked on the streets of Baltimore with it, played it in an improv psychedelic jam in Kyoto and in the "Amemura folk jamboree" in a basement bar in Osaka, wrote several songs on it, and played it in my living room on lonely nights.

And as you might guess, I've developed quite a sentimental attachment to the darned thing.

Last night I noticed something alarming about my old friend: her neck had started to come loose from her body. Thus, this morning she was delivered into the hands of the luthiers at Appalachian Bluegrass in Catonsville. (No, I don't play bluegrass, but they're the best acoustic guitar shop in town.) And it's a curious thing that I actually felt a twinge almost like leaving my dog at the vet.

Getting this fixed may actually end up costing more than I paid for the the guitar, all those years ago. (It also needs to have the bridge re-attached.) From a purely "rational" viewpoint it might make more sense to go buy another guitar. But if we were purely "rational", we wouldn't make and listen to music, would we?

So, yes, the Buddha tells us that attachment is the origin of suffering, and yes, tools can be the subtlest of traps, and yes, there's a samurai maxim that any old weapons and armor are good enough, but screw you, I'm going to pay what it takes to get this ol' axe fixed.