A favorite Zen story about Hakuin:

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near Hakuin. One day, without any warning, her parents discovered she was pregnant. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

About two years ago, I wrote about green energy company Clean Currents and its relationship with the very shady company Washington Gas Energy Services. In fairness, it's time for an update on that.

<facepalm> I support the right to keep and bear arms. This doofus is not helping. (BTW, in my experience, socialists are more likely to own guns than the general population. As Orwell -- a socialist -- wrote, "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.")

Obama voters, Muslims need not apply for gun course

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - A central Texas gun dealer ran radio ads advising "Socialist" liberals, those who voted for President Barack Obama, Arabs and Muslims that they need not apply for his concealed gun license class.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: poem based on the following wordlist, generated from the theme: traffic

patient, stillness, delay, glare, chaos, reflection, overheating, tailgating,
carbon monoxide, separation, congestion, rush, taillight, blacktop,
disabled, backup

I rush to end the separation but
get caught up in the congestion and
the chaos of the backup and
am stuck unmoving, overheating,
instead of moving toward stillness

my patience is disabled
and then I realize
if I'm stuck sitting still
while I'm trying to get to stillness
haven't I already arrived?

there is no where else to go

Exercise 2: free-write from one or more of the following phrases:

extreme vocal attack
there is no cost
empty promise of freedom
the seat of power
hard to argue with

the empty promise of freedom
cults, messiahs, demagogues, rulers
all saying "follow me, I will take you there"
but this empty promise is a contradiction
no one else can take you to the place where
you are free from the need for others to take you places
no one else can give you yourself

freedom is knowing yourself and
no one else can give you yourself
and the empty promises of freedom
are the chatter of salesmen
the bait on the hook
the lure in the snare
the teachers of freedom give tools
not directions, not maps

no one can give it to you
no one can walk it for you
so many empty promises
so many empty words
so many slogans and manifestos
to dress up the vacuum
so the more they talk, the more they promise
the more you can spot the lies

freedom makes no promises

This is what inadequate heath care looks like. This is what a system that puts profits over treatment looks like. Right-wingers will say this $10 million settlement shows the need for tort reform; sane people will say that the fact that a toddler lost her feet, left hand, and part of her right hand because of delayed emergency room care shows the need to real health care reform.

From http://news.yahoo.com/girl-10m-amputations-er-delay-185910406.html:

The family of a California toddler whose feet, left hand and part of her right hand were amputated because of a lengthy emergency room delay has agreed to a $10 million malpractice settlement.

...

The hospital instead told them to continue waiting, and it was five hours before Malyia was first seen by a doctor, the document said.

"Ryan Jeffers and Leah Yang saw their daughter get weaker and sicker hour after hour as (hospital workers) chose to delay treatment," the complaint said. "They saw the bruising on her body increase, affecting her legs, arms and face. They were afraid she would die in the waiting room."

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a poem on the theme, "escape route":

escape routes

you've got to have a way out
a backup plan
don't hide in a hole unless you've got a tunnel to another exit
never get cornered --
if you do, climb the walls to get away

always leave room in your schedule
don't buy the train ticket until the last minute
maybe you'll want to stay longer or
maybe you'll need to skip town right away

this world is too complex for your plans
maintain flexibility of attack and defense
don't commit until you must
leave options open
have spare keys
know where the exits are in case of fire
have food and water and ammunition on hand in case of zombie apocalypse
be ready to jump out a window if the cops show up

don't get addicted or dependent or otherwise chained
and don't get chained to "non-attachment" either
grasp what comes but be ready, always ready, to let go
when the time comes

it's not paranoia --
or maybe it is, but so what
so long as you don't get trapped
let them say what they will, so long as you remain free
like clouds, like water
uncontainable

I came down for an hour or so yesterday, just to see what was what. Danced to the drumming for a bit, and the playful and gentle nature of some of what's happening here (drumming, dancing, art, communal sacred space, giant potluck meals) reminded me of some of Kery Thornley's "yin revolution" and "counter-games" ideas in his book Zenarchy. The Occupy movement is not just a protest, but an experiment and a demonstration of an alternative to the hierarchical socioeconomic systems that have dominated our thinking for centuries.

I also ended up running into someone I knew years ago in Baltimore and fell into good conversation with her and with a high school girl she had befrended. Just hearing people's stories is also a big piece of what this is about, for as John Steinbeck wrote, "two men [or women] are not as lonely and perplexed as one".

Came down again this afternoon after my plan to visit the Statue of Liberty was derailed by a security snafu. (Apparently the US Park Service fears that I will use the awesome power of my Gerber multi-tool to disassemble the Statue of Liberty. There is, of course, no irony at all in the paranoia of the security state preventing me from visiting the Statue of Liberty. I gave up my ticket rather than have them take the $60 tool.) Ran into a few more Baltimore people (between OWS, and running into a woman who used to date one of my best friends in the Village last night, seems I can't even escape into anonymity in New York), and got into more interesting conversations with strangers, but spent most of today's time here just sitting at the community altar, holding space. (Photos to come.)

It's interesting how people react to the barriers the police have put up around the site. They don't completely enclose the space, you can move in and out freely, yet many people come up and stand on the other side watching, as if watching a parade or something. Perhaps a deliberate bit of police strategy to keep people from feeling like they can join or identify with the occupation -- establishing a boundary that takes a deliberate act to step across.

So I invite you to cross it. Go down to your local Occupy group and join them, even for an hour. Cross the lines that the power structure sets up to keep us divided.

So Steve Jobs has died. I was never a member of the cult of Jobs -- anyone pro-censorship hits a ratings ceiling pretty quick in my book -- but I don't care to badmouth the guy right now. Instead, in the spirit of the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement, I'd like to point out a few things that his story illustrates about corporate capitalism and the concentration of wealth.

Perhaps first should be the fact that we are talking about his death now, rather than two years ago. Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004, and had a liver transplant in 2009. The questionable circumstances around this transplant, including the fact that he was able to obtain the transplant surgery on the other side of the country from his home, are a perfect illustration of how the concentration of wealth is a matter of life and death. "Multiple listing" for a transplant is not something you or I would be able to do in Job's place

So Jobs's fantastic wealth -- estimated to be $8.3 billion as of 2010, making him the 42nd wealthiest American -- gave him a few extra years of life. Well, didn't he earn it? Look at his contribution to technology, after all!

But Jobs is getting a lot of credit right now for things he did not do.

He did not "invent the personal computer", as some headlines are putting it. There were PCs before Apple, going back to 1973's Micral N. The original Apple hit the market the same time as the Commodore PET and the TRS-80, with Commodore getting the nod as "the first successfully mass marketed PC", according to the wik. The technical genius behind the original Apple/Apple II was Steve Wozniak, Job's contribution was more on the business/marketing side. (According to Woz, Jobs "never programmed in his life, though that's a bit of an exaggeration.)

The Macintosh GUI was based on work from Xerox PARC. The iPod was far from the first personal digital music player around. Job's genius was in polishing existing ideas, and making designs that captivated people -- branding and marketing.

The "genius lone inventor" myth contributes to both our screwed-up patent system and our "winner take all" economics. I'll bet you some right-wing talking head has already used Jobs as an example of someone who "deserved" to have the wealth of 8,300 mere millionaires, or of 89,000 average American families. Allowing Jobs to have credit for the work of many, many others distorts important truths about the concentration of wealth in our society.

Finally, I ought to note that unlike Bill Gates (for whom I have no great love!), Jobs was noted for a lack of philanthropy during his life, including cutting corporate philanthropy programs at Apple. It will be interesting to see how Jobs directed his wealth to be distributed after his death.

When i first heard of the "Occupy Wallstreet" idea a few months ago, honestly, I thought it was silly, that about 20 people would show up.

On this one, I am glad to be wrong.

Tonight, I'm in Baltimore's McKeldin Square (Pratt and Light Streets) for the first night of Occupy Baltimore. I couldn't make it down before 10pm, and I don't know what I'll be able to do over the next few weeks; but I thought it important to be here tonight and do what I can.

I went to the planning meeting at 2640 on Sunday -- there were about 200 people there. Certainly the largest meeting I've seen run by a democratic/semi-consensus model.

So why am I here? I'm tired of three decades of worsening economic injustice, of the L curve getting worse and worse. I'm tired of the suppression of democracy by monied interests. I'm tired of a socioeconomic system that pretends that poverty and homelessness and lack of access to medical care is some sort of natural force, and not the result of human political decisions about how we share and allocate natural and human resources.

I'm here because I want to see some economic justice, and the reinvigoration of democracy. While I'd eventually like to see the dawn of a Thoreau-ean Zenarchy, in the mean time I'd like the constitutional democratic republic they told me about in school instead of the corporate authoritarian militaristic plutocracy in which I find myself.

Join us. See Occupy Baltimore or the Facebook page , or Occupy Together around the world.