THE HEIGHTS OF OUR HEAVENS

We modern folk seem ever to be wanting more out of life than we're getting out of being virtualized toward artificiality; what’s going missing, other than we ourselves? Modern knowledge as handed down via commercial and other media pays little heed to the vital portion of our being that generates no profit. It is as though time past has gone only into the dust of history, as though it weren’t coiled up in us vital still and always, living back to the first of all... 

What impresses me the more I age is the extreme youthful difficulty, as viewed from even this mere vantage, of avoiding the conventional channels of thought, the standard lifemoves and the received ambitions to which they give rise, while the natural mental topography, traced with ancient pathways, is fundamental in our thoughts, concordant with the ancient knowings, where understanding is as the flowing stream to the mountain slope. The meditative mind when let to fly soon finds its true compass and nourishment for the journey, inner light acting upon a mind as the sun upon a garden.

I recommend that you become a hawk for a time; use your own wings. Discover for yourself the heights of your heavens and see what once was unseen that is yours; move in dimensions where no bodied man has been. What person would refuse this experience, even one chronically virtualized? The truest way to earth is from your own heaven.

MOUNTAIN ROAD INFORMATION

On my way this morning to pick up the grandies for a day at the beach, I as I wended my slow way down the curvy mountain road from the upper unshorn rice paddies rich in rice stalks pendant with their weight of gold, on past the lower shorn rice fields still gleaming in the morning sun, the lines of stubble echoing the curves of the paddies like stitches on an ancient tapestry - halfway down there was a farmer harvesting, streaming his whole field of rice into the back of his truck - in between the eaches of it all I looked out over the Lake that was mostly Prussian blue, with long winding bands of dark sapphire and lapis layered in here and there all the way to the far shore, the entirety speckled with bright sailboats and motor boats, cruisers and yachts, one long white wake of a cigarette boat slashing along in a loud hurry to get out of all this beauty, as across the Lake the mountains rose in sun-stippled granite, above them in turn the way-higher mountains of alive white clouds tumbling upward, ending in the same sheer blue where the silver full moon lives, all below shimmering with the gold that streams from that early slant of the autumn sun... There is priceless information on a mountain road...

STARS ON THE GROUND

Interesting, watching western celebs get interviewed for Japanese tv by reporters who don't speak English or respond to English or its tonal, facial, manual gestures and intimations, but work through an interpreter on the side whom the audience does not see and the celeb does not address, so for the less manic celebs the general PR boilerplate is thereby minimized and the usual dross falls away so you hear only Japanese questions asked, with the celeb's English replies and subtitles edited in for the response, and as all the usual nuancing is no longer of value, the celebs become more neutral, culturally isolated, no longer rely on polemic manipulations etc., so are more personal, open and 'normal,' less guarded, like Michael Moore the other night, he wasn't 'on' the way he always is, thinkingagendathinking, he just chatted, no psychic drumrolls, no showmanship, seemed like a nice concerned guy you might have sat next to in a bar in Flint...

JAPAN MORTIFIED BY US CONSERVATIVE REACTION TO OBAMA'S BOW

To fill in a bit about the previous post, in the everywhere photos of "The Bow," all you see is the low point, and from the worst perspective. When you see the entire 'performance,' from Obama's entrance to the finish, it happens quickly and gracefully, with details a blur. As mixed and awkward as it may be in its elements, however, it is elegantly executed overall, and there is no sense of submissiveness. Obama is in control (though spontaneously, not practicedly) of his part of the situation. America need not be upset, apart from the salaried media phobiacs.

Also, it should in fairness be noted that one can, in presumably less formal situations, shake hands while giving a shallow (20-30 degree) bow, though in the bowvideo I saw on tv here yesterday evening (the only one I've seen), as he approaches the Emperor Obama clearly intends to shake hands, then while doing so executes a deep, quick and rather unexpected bow, which is not as awkward looking as when frozen in the ubiquitous still shot.

In the press here, the main news point now, and primary reference to the whole affair, is the strange reaction of the conservative press in the US, that Obama has submitted to the Emperor and so on (Japanese Mortified by Obama's Bow, for example, when the reality is now more like the header of this post). Puzzled looks follow on the tv anchors' faces, as in Japan there is no commensurately gloating reaction to the bow; the general feeling is more like gratitude for the effort at cultural politeness, a characteristic alien to the mentally isolated.

THE CLOUD RESEMBLES A RABBIT

In a previous millennium, not long after I had come to Japan and seen how different the news was over here from what it had been back home, where Japan was still not quite above suspicion as an ally (and never will be, in some still-living minds), I was experiencing what every traveler senses at every international transit: that borders determine news, and that all news is local. Every seasoned border-crosser knows how the truth changes when that judicial interface is passed, how the victims on one side become the murderers on the other. But this was all rather subconsciously perceived by me at the time, amid the swarm of new information travel stirs up.

I guess that’s why not long after I arrived in Tokyo I had a dream in which as a dream novice monk I asked my dream abbot the koan “What is media?” and he responded “The cloud resembles a rabbit,” which phrase was floating homeless in my newly alien brain as I awoke. I thought it a rather silly answer at the time; but then, I was only a novice alien dream monk.

Since then I’ve traveled more, and have seen and heard more news here and there and elsewhere from an increasingly alien perspective, and have observed how difficult it can be for a local to maintain a healthy skepticism while immersed in a sea of information served up by ‘trained’ and ‘qualified’ professionals who are actually ‘on the spot’. It seems most people never travel ‘far’ enough to gain such perspective, and never see how profoundly their own borders alter news, and so general populaces tend to trust their media, which by definition stand between the seeker and the truth.

Once upon a time, when there was nothing between us and reality, when rock or tree or flower or wind or stream was as real as our imagining – when we were inseparate from the actuality around us-- our hands were easily water, our eyes easily sky, our hearts easily fire. Long before there were media standing dutifully in our light, or streaming through the air in disembodied voices or faces, or sheets of paper covered with words from minds, times and places we can never know or be in; before we began to indulge in the narcissistic addiction of setting ourselves up to believe even history was true as told to us, subsequently relying on second, third and fourth-hand accounts of events to keep us abreast of things we didn’t really have a clue about except this or that smidgeon afforded us by an unknown and elsewhere accredited committee, thus collectively aspiring to the dangerous illusion that bides at the heart of modern society, i. e., that we actually have a handle on what is going on around the world even now – as I say, before all these veils came to be (pay no attention to that man behind the curtain), we saw no separation between ourselves and the world around us, had as yet created no distinction, no palisades of faith, no moats of patriotism, no need for better and better weapons and the right to bear them, no seeds of distrust, no doubting the very air.

Environed as we are now by information and its aftereffects, with billboards on our eyeballs and pixels in our faces, new stars in the sky and etherwaves sectoring our very bodies, all we need is the internet. How crucial it has become, then, that we revive and maintain our ancient skepticism, our own intelligence, as we carom like corks down the whitewater rapids of data directed by experts. So gain perspective: look at a tree if you can find one, and remember the roots; or at least look up at a patch of sky and remember that the cloud resembles a rabbit.

One of my Rambles, From Kyoto Journal #46

HANDI-BARF

Do you find yourself among the growing number of perceptive individuals suffering the onslaughts of modern life who don't want to cause dangerously slippery carpets, sidewalks and stairwells, yet are experiencing a steadily intensifying need to barf your guts out right on the spot, several times a day?

Well here's the solution to that nagging problem: new Handi-Barf, a compact, portable place to toss your cookies pretty close to spontaneously, anywhere irrepressible nausea is generated.

Handi-Barf is just what the intelligent and tasteful modern-day individual needs to keep in social trim without losing any throwup time from the metaphysical rollercoaster of modern living. Carried in purse, slipped into a pocket, hooked onto your tie, placed on your desk or suspended from the person in front of you on the subway, Handi-Barf affords civilized relief in a flash-- with no muss, no fuss and no apologies.

Bring Handi-Barf with you to bureaucracies, financial houses, art openings, fashion shows, political gatherings–- anywhere that old metaphoric finger can slip down your throat. And while you're reading the latest best-seller, just clip your Handi-Barf to the bottom of the book, so you can upchuck as you read; could anything be more convenient?

And if you have to watch the tube, simply suspend your Handi-Barf from the patented Handi-Barf headgear as you experience an evening of typical programming, and you won't have to stop watching, even during commercials, to ralph your tv dinner.

Or should you be unavoidably exposed to the fundamentally righteous, simply whip out your Handi-Barf and let your soul experience the truth and light afforded only by the joy that surpasseth the surrender of understanding.

No more waiting, hand over mouth! No more scrambling for a door handle, racing for a toilet bowl, groping for a wastebasket, searching for an open window, hassling with a coat pocket or wrestling with a handbag! No more panic at the surging of all those existential cookies that so urgently need tossing in these times of potentially non-stop nausea!

Handi-Barf, Inc.: pioneers in metaphysical hardware.

KYOTO JOURNAL #70

Kyoto Journal's "Kyoto Lives" special issue now out...

SHADOW OF ICE

I have to laugh when I read US 'news' like I read this morning, where it said that "Republicans fear public has lost confidence" following another surprise congressional loss in Mississippi - after surprise losses in other special elections in Illinois and Louisiana - the well-spun headline indicating only a vague suspicion that there might be shreds of evidence here and there suggesting the possibility that perhaps some sort of negative change could be on the verge of occurring in a small way, or not... No hint of the Shadow of Ice that resides in the White House, of the deep voter revulsion that has been evident and growing to the full heave for some years now...

But then those media are heavily pwned, are they not...

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