Month: September 2004

More Dumb Luck

Perhaps my favorite poem in Sam Hamill’s Dumb Luck is the poem “Dumb Luck” itself, but I’m not going to discuss it here. I’ll just say that it might be worth the price of the book all by itself.

In light of yesterday’s entry on technology, I decided that this poem was more appropriate:

TO BILL AND KRIS

I never wanted
a cell phone or electronic
mail, a Cadillac
or a limousine to cruise
the Information Highway.

A dusty back road
through obdurate relics of
civilization
is where I’ve built my retreat.
Give me a California

Job Drawer, a press
I can ink by hand, cotton
fiber paper made
by hand in France, Italy
or Japan, and let me be.

I like the feel of
the poem as it takes shape
in my hands, the smell
of damp paper, oil, type wash,
the hum and clunk of the press.

Technology is,
of itself, neither good nor
evil, but bequeaths
and reveals what’s in the heart
already: whether pine breeze

or voracious
appetite. It’s not that I
reject the comforts
of modern technology-
I want my running water,

electricity,
a warm house in deep winter.
More is not better-
not always. The marketplace
attracts a gaggle of thieves.

Rats seek the rice bowl.
I’ve spent a lifetime getting
a little out of
line, content with solitude,
half a recluse, a throwback,

building with my hands
this little Buddhist retreat
we named Kage-an,
Shadow Hermitage, under
the dark cedars of the North-

west coast. This is not
a retreat from the world’s ways,
as some Buddhists think,
but an entryway, a door
opening on the real world.

I keep things simple
in my hands and heart. I was,
from the start, a fool-
stubborn, happy in my work,
making a gift no one wants

and giving it all
away. I still remember
the first time I heard
a single alder leaf fall
through autumn trees, a click, click

as it tumbled down.
You can’t give away that sound.
You can hold the moon
between your hands, but you can’t
hold it long. The simple fact

of poetry is
astonishment enough. That
and life’s ironies
duly noted as I write
this epistle on my Mac.

Now, I know few of you are old enough to have ever set real type, but I took a printing class in junior high and must admit a certain fondness for the feel of lead type. When you’re setting type by hand you’re more apt to limit the special effects because of the extra work required, especially trying to fit in the extra ems and ens.

Though I’ve never built my own house, I have built most of my furniture and enjoy the feeling of having made a house my own. I’d certainly agree, as noted before, that “More is not better-/not always.” Anyone trying to keep his blog free of spam would certainly understand “Rats seek the rice bowl.”

If I didn’t agree with Hamill that “The simple fact/of poetry is/ astonishment enough” I would never have devoted so much time to it in this web site.

Of course the line that really convinced me I had to quote this poem is “That/ and life’s ironies/ duly noted as I write/ this epistle on my Mac” since, as everyone who reads me knows, I write all of these entries on my Mac.

Although I sometimes find myself wishing that Hamill’s poetry was more lyrical, I’m also surprised how often I find myself saying “right on” when I read his poems. Our interests and attitudes are so similar that I’m sometimes tempted to drive a little ways up the road to Port Townsend and hunt him down just to say hello.

Of course, being an INTP that’s an unlikely scenario, and personally I wouldn’t want to get arrested for being a stalker, not just a fellow poetry lover.

Technology’s Dark Side

Yesterday was one of those days that I would have been more than happy to pull the plug on my computer, walk away from it, and never come back. For awhile at least, it seemed that this powerful genie I’ve come to rely on had been hijacked by the Dark Side of the Force.

When a Domain Name Really Isn’t

Looking back, of course, perhaps I should have been aware that The Force was no longer with me when my domain name expired Sunday. It turned out that the ten dollar fee I paid in May when I received an email warning me that my domain was up for renewal wasn’t for the renewal of my domain name at all, but, instead, was for renewal of “domain management,” something I’ve since been told I really didn’t need at all. It was painfully obvious, however, that a domain name is an absolute must unless you’re as smart as Shelley Powers and know another address that will get you to your site.

I even learned why you might need more than one email address from this experience. Many people who tried to notify me by email that my site was down using loren (at) lorenwebster.net couldn’t get through because, of course, it uses the domain name as part of the email address.

When Your Call-In Wasn’t

Things didn’t go much better when I went in to Walgreen’s Monday morning to pick up a prescription that I’d called in the night before on the phone. The pharmacist, of course, said he had no record of the request, so I had to sit and wait for the prescription to be filled. The lady sitting next to me said Walgreen’s had an online service that would automatically have prescriptions filled. When I asked at the counter if they could put my name on the list they said no, that I’d have to go online to request the service. After yesterday’s experiences, I hesitate to do so.

That Labyrinth Called the IRS

Apparently, though, hindsight is greater than foresight, because I blindly forged on in an attempt to complete a number of financial transactions using my computer yesterday. I’d actually been putting off finalizing pre-paying my income taxes on line at EFTPS because I figured it would be time consuming. After signing up a week or so ago online, I finally received a letter telling me how to obtain a password over the phone. I just knew I would have to punch in endless numbers and wait an interminable length of time to get a password.

I was only half right. Because it was automated, I didn’t have to wait at all. What I did have to do was punch in several long strings of number, at times without truly understanding what numbers they wanted. First of all, in the IRS’s usual attempts to obfuscate their process, they requested that you input your T.I.N. number, never once letting on that this was your Tax Identification Number, more commonly referred to as your S.S.N., or Social Security Number.

Is this some attempt by the IRS to distance themselves from the much-maligned Social Security system? Are they afraid they’ll become the next target of Conservative Republicans once they rid us of the dreaded Social Security? That can’t be. The Republicans are already doing everything they can to get rid of the IRS, aren’t they, though it’s still unclear how they’ll pay for their wars and funnel money back to their contributors without a tax system.

Despite having spent two years in the army using the Radio Operator Alphabet and never having trouble in Vietnam understanding a single message, I had to listen to the programmed message from the programmed voice several times to figure out what my password was. Why couldn’t this have all been done on the computer? Why introduce snail mail and telephone calls into what would seem to be a fairly easy transaction? Still, after an hour or so I managed to complete the transaction, though I’ll have to check my online bank a little later to see if the money has really been transferred.

With Friends Like PayPal Who Needs Enemies?

Being the slow learner that I am, when I saw Shelley Powers’ request for donations to help maintain her web site, I immediately clicked through to PayPal to make a donation.

What followed is not for the fainthearted or for those who don’t want their faith in America’s financial institutions undermined. Tell me Paypal isn’t run by eBay!

I’ve used Paypal once or twice to buy software online and to make donations to websites that I frequent. I even have an “account,” though judging from yesterday’s travails it’s an account I’ll never be able to access again because I have moved and changed my email account.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember my password because PayPail wouldn’t accept one of the three or four standard passwords I’ve used over the last few years. When I went back to my Keychain Access, there was no entry for Paypal, apparently lost in the dreaded hard drive crash last year or in the transfer from my G3 to my G4 many years ago.

No problem, I figured, have them email me my password with their handy email feature. Not so fast, turns out that they want to email it to the original email address you used when you signed up. Of course that company hasn’t been in business for years now, having sold out to Comcast. Next, they’ll send it to a new email address if you pick up your phone within two minutes. Oops, you generally don’t take the same phone number with you when you move half way across the state. Okay, then we’ll send it to your original address. Not there? Then gather up a statement with your original address and bank account number and fax it to them, and they’ll mail you your password in four or five weeks.

After all this, I decided to just try to sign up for a new account. After I registered all my information and entered my VISA number, I was informed that that VISA account number belonged to a Paypal member and I couldn’t register for an account using it.

I suppose if I were a “normal” American consumer I could just pull out another credit card and use that number. After all, I’d been told that at the airlines when my credit card wouldn’t scan at their e-check in line. When I told the attendant I didn’t have any other kind of credit card, she looked at me in a strange way and for a moment I was afraid that she was going to call security and accuse me of being Un-American for only having only one credit account.

Needless to say, I won’t be faxing my account information to Paypal, and if necessary I will walk my contribution to Shelley in St Louis. It might be faster that way.

Sam Hamill’s Dumb Luck

I’ve decided to take a break from Chinese and Japanese poetry and refocus on Western poetry for awhile. Luckily, Sam Hamill’s Dumb Luck makes the transition rather easy. If you’ve been following for awhile, you might remember that I discussed several of Hamill’s translations, and this volume of his own poems, like the previous one I discussed, also contains a number of translations.

The book is divided into four sections. Section one includes poems that generally seem written in the western tradition, though a number of my favorites include allusions to Eastern poems as does this one:

CHUANG TZU AND THE FIRST NOBLE TRUTH

As Chuang Tzu would say
when some good Confucian talked
about righteousness
and virtue, “Not quite there yet,
eh?” knowing that words can say

only so much, that
behind the words are more words,
and more behind those.
What the old man understood
is that each word names, and by

naming, it divides:
this from that and on and on.
But the Tao is one.
What is good is good for whom?
Do dogs have Buddha nature?

Say yes or say no,
and Buddha nature is gone.
The practice refines
itself. All the words I’ve loved
so many years? Going, gone.

Buddha nature, Tao,
the practice of poetry-
going, going, gone.
Present mind and future mind
lie beyond what is contained.

What mind do we bring
to the poem or to bed?
Stuck in samsara,
dreaming of truth and virtue,
just who is that butterfly,

just who is that man
who says again with a grin
and shake of the head,
“Struggle and judgment and pain-
still not quite there yet, eh?”

Having just spent most of the summer focusing on Chinese and Japanese literature, references to Chuang Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha all take on a new meaning, one that relates directly to the paradoxical nature of trying to write about Buddhism. Each word attempts to describe a small segment of “reality;” words are by their very nature “divisive.” How, then, can one use them to convey the idea of the underlying unity of our world?

And in the end, of course, no matter how much I read once I am drawn back to the “real” world, and particularly the world of politics, I find myself muttering “still not quite there yet, eh?”

Still unsure whether I want to shut out the whole world of politics or, like some Buddhist monk protesting the Vietnam war, sacrifice myself to help create a world that I would want to live in.

The second section of the book is entitled Lives of a Poet: Saigyo’s Soiitude. My favorite poem in this section is:

On the clear mirror,
just a single speck of dust.
And yet we see it
before all else, our poor world
having come to what it is.

Although I suspect that there are more than a few specks of dust on my mirror, it’s good to be reminded that we should not allow ourselves to be distracted from our original purpose by those imperfections. If we are, we will forget that the purpose of the mirror is to reflect ourselves so that we can see ourselves as we truly are and continue our journey of becoming.

Roethke’s “The Geranium”

Here’s a poem I promised Jonathon, one I’ve loved since first reading it in college even though I was still living at home and had never tried raising plants on my own:

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine–
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she’d lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!–
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me–
And that was scary–
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

Turns out I’m no better raising houseplants than Roethke was, particularly as a bachelor. I wonder if that says more about my personal relationships or my habits?

Perhaps it says more about how lonely I was as a bachelor.