my life

More exercises from Zelda's:

1) Connect these two lines:

It was the best of times, it was the - holy shit! What the hell is that?

and

And as she fell into his arms she lost all hope

It was the best of times, it was the - holy shit! What the hell is that?

She jumped in her chair
almost dropped the book
at the thunderous crash outside

and then the door opened
and he walked in
again
without warning
he walked back in
to the house
to her life
walked back in
after five years

walked back in
like the moon returning to the sky

Seems wrong to let the day, fifth anniversary of 9/11, pass unnoted; but there's nothing new to say. I'll just point to what I posted this time last year.

Here's lyrics to a song a wrote about that day (which will be on my forthcoming CD, whenever I get around to finishing that):

"No Words of Wisdom"
Tom Swiss

Everybody's looking at me
They ask me to sing and play
But I've got no words of wisdom
For a day like today

I came down here with my guitar
To help you pass the time
We could have a drink and have some fun
And sing these songs of mine

This week's exercise from Zelda's Inferno: 5 card draw from a "universe deck", which gave me the following words to use: bitter earth spice kiss love

the love of the earth
slow moving and molten hot
comes to me through
her kiss

the sweet spices and bitter herbs
the fruits and the grains

her love sustains me
as love should

Been working a lot on the house the past week, moving furniture around, making preparations to renovate the rear addition, catching up on cleaning.

Dusting off photos of old friends who I haven't seen in months...there's some kind of symbolism there. "The mind is like a bright mirror in a stand, take care to keep it free of dust.", the old Buddhist poem.

Dust piles up on the photos in their frames
Faces of friends, some long unseen
Are hidden and dimmmed
Though memory is always bright
Memory is always bright

I don't usually do these (I could spend a lot of time on them if I did), but what the heck...was sent to me by someone I'd like to know better, and I'm sending it on to at least one person who might want to play, or at least be interested to see it...

1. FIRST NAME? Tom

2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? One of my dad's best friends from high
school

3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? define "cry"...I got misty-eyed watching a rerun
of the Simpsons this evening (the one where Bart sells his "soul" to
Milhouse for five bucks and Lisa ends up buying it back for him).

4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Nope, it's why I print - and I don't like

Two exercises from Zelda's Inferno:

1) using these four things:

1 inanimate object: window glass
2 landscape or geography: sidewalks and streets
3 newspapers/current event: latest terrorism scare
4 from tv: idiot talking heads

how many windows have I looked out of, in how many cities
on to how many sidewalks and streets
watching people go by
mostly watching the women, to be sure

the window glass keeps me safely inside, separated from what I see
vision only, no sounds, like a TV that's muted

When I'm at Starwood, I always make it a point to attend the Reverend
Ivan Stang's "rants", always entertaining and thought-provoking. This time,
though, Ivan had a story to tell that was more frightening.

It seems that a lovely SubGenius
lass, Reverend Magdalen, is stuck in a custody battle with her ex over
their young son. Ok, sad, but common. What's uncommon is that the ex used
photos of her from the SubGenius's "X Day" celebration (held at the
Brushwood Folklore Center, same location as Starwood).

A week after Starwood...still adusting to Mundania....so hot, sapping energy, haven't finished unpacking yet...

Trying to cultivate yin, get my house in order, catch up on paperwork and house
projects after two months of travel, Saiten, FSG, Chicago/Milwakee for the AOBTA convention, Starwood...and spend some quality time with the dogs, especially after Picollo getting sick while I was in Chicago. And back to Zelda's after a few weeks away.

From a Zelda's Inferno exercise:

firefly

when we were kids we would catch them gently

running around my grandfather's yard on summer night

put them in glass jars with holes in the lids and a few blades of grass in the bottom

let them go at the end of the night

catch them from underneath, hands scooping up to match their flight, cupping the lightning bug inside

its flashing tail betraying it to our child-eyes

never wanting to hurt, just hold the wonder for a little while

later

first time I went to camp, nine or ten years old, other boys my age, me not fitting in much as usual but liking being in the park

evening, summer, games

some other boy catches lightning bug

"watch this!"

smashes it on my chest, smearing its glow across my t-shirt

casual cruelty still stuns me twenty five plus years later

if I had to summarize all that's stupid and wrong and sick in this world of men

in just one moment

the death of one firefly might do it

Post to the Sabaki list in response to "A School Full of Pooh Bears", an excerpt from John Gradens new book, The Truth About the Martial Arts Business

To paraphrase Tom Hanks in the movie A League of Their Own, there_s no crying as a black belt!

Shoot. Ok, then, where do I turn mine in? Hell, I've been known to cry at episodes of The Simpsons...

Its important to be OK with the fact that martial arts can't be all things to all people. The very term martial means military. Military relates to matters of war.

It's often a bad idea to try to define what something is, by going to word origins. "Tragedy" comes from roots meaning "goat song", after all. Some martial arts - karate, for example - were not created for the battlefield, but for personal self-defense or for civil law and order enforcement. But we still call them "martial" arts.

This doesn't mean each class is devoted to killing or war tactics; it means that our foundation is one of peace through superior firepower.

The problem, of course, is that superior firepower doesn't bring peace (as my country is demonstrating in Iraq for all to see).