A BETTER BREEZE

through many journeys

the way to study the Self

is to forget the self

The concert is over. Fresh air and this, I've got to ask: Who sent out for climate change? Here we are, and just who brought up the Doomsday Machine with its nuclear armed submarines, bombers, and missile silos? Did I weave the web of airlines that, within a couple of weeks, delivered the COVID-19 virus?

Even though no one actually saw the culprit, get the genie! It would be a coup. Experts and software wizards are everywhere, so everyone or no one can be blamed. And this will have to tide us over until we actually see some proof.

How easily the idea slides out, like a drawer on metal runners.

But neither is it a mole that refuses to surface and be whacked. Out of sight, out of mind? We hover over the mound with a shovel. It's in there. Imagination creates a virtual mole to smack, here it comes, rolling out on a ball bearing slide. How fast? That can be calculated if some units and measurements are specified.

Oh, permit me to change the story slightly.

Does he seem motivated by a sense of smell, our genie? No one is sure. A few reports have mentioned hunches, precognitive leaps, telepathy. A genie, we know, can get pissed off. To bring this question up to date, how many CEOs can dance on a spread sheet?

To get data for a spread sheet, visual observations are preferred, being by nature well defined. Scientists like well defined events because accurate measurements are possible. Clear distinctions are sharp as a knife, unmistakable as the difference between black and white, unshakable as the logic of a straight line versus a circle. Thought itself, as that required for this discussion, habitually proceeds in terms based in such experience. But units of smell? What do these look like? Is telepathy measured in centimeters or ounces? And reason, surely, is not affected by gravity?

There are some hints buried in moon tides, which as well as being measurable also affect moods. Neither moods nor the smells they might cause can be entered on a spreadsheet. Reality blurs into a scientific no-man's land. If I am immersed in the scent of summer jasmine blooms, my poetic claim will be less precise than the measurement of how much a compression ring squeezes in a piston groove. On the other hand, if you slap the tide hard enough it will definitely hurt. And the mole might poke its head up. Do moles laugh? What is the color of laughter?

I did not get along well with my father,  whose only relevance here would be ghostly. In the fresh air of this backyard, amidst atavisims of Eden, we find a legacy he never intended, for which he deserves credit even though I'm glad he's not around any more. The mockery of Apple's well known logo was nullified here well in advance of Steve Jobs. Dad's chief accomplishment was making the best apple pie in the world. Though he was quite proud of being Vice President of Sales for Breuer Electric Corporation, his next best accomplishment was making a vegetable garden for us. Though he made many mistakes, blaming me for his customary marriage, he nonetheless got us a place in San Carlos. It had a creek running through the backyard and it was there, at five years of age, I had my first kensho, long before I discovered a word for it.

This yard does not have a creek running through it, and it's not much like the redwood forest I knew, just off Bear Creek Road near Los Gatos, but in all there is more than meets the eye. It can't be thought about, if at all, in only that way, not being compressed into what I see. Or into the pictures I take. Or in the songs of visiting birds that become friends. In fact, not many vegetables are growing here. In this disparity of terms, like the discontinuity of this narrative, it's more like a dusty window sill that's being swept by a breeze. And to top it off, neither is a BART train rattling through here.