I’m now in my 16th year of retirement. Still, like a lot of retired people, I stay very busy, working as a volunteer naturalist in Sabino Canyon, where we teach children about nature, leading nature walks and hikes on the many trails in Sabino Canyon. When I’m not volunteering, I spend my time doing creative things, usually after morning conditioning activities.
Over the years, I have created an extensive iTunes library of music and recorded poetry and psychology. This morning while walking in the neighborhood, I had my iTunes library on shuffle, and two of my non-music recordings of authors came on; Charles Bukowski, “Something for the Touts, the Nuns, the Grocery Clerks and You” and Alan Watts lecture titled “Insides and Outsides.” It was spiritual.
Alan Watts — Insides and Outsides (audio)
Charles Bukowski Video
We have everything, and we have nothing Some do it well enough for a while and then give way Fame gets them or disgust or age or lack of proper diet or ink across the eyes or children in college Or new cars or broken backs while skiing in Switzerland Or new politics or new wives Or just natural change and decay — The man you knew yesterday hooking for ten rounds or drinking for three days and three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now just something under a sheet or a cross, or a stone, or under an easy delusion Or packing a bible or a golf bag or a briefcase How they go, how they go! All the ones you thought would never go Days like this, like your day today Maybe the rain on the window trying to get through to you What do you see today? What is it? Where are you? The best days are sometimes the first, sometimes the middle, and even sometimes the last. The vacant lots are not bad Churches in Europe on postcards are not bad? People in wax museums frozen into their best sterility are not bad? Horrible, but not bad? The cannons, think of the cannon And toast for breakfast and coffee hot enough to know your tongue is still there Three geraniums outside a window, trying to be red and trying to be pink and trying to be geraniums No wonder sometimes the women cry No wonder the mules don’t wanna go up the hill. One more good day, a little bit of it
Enough and not enough Arcs and pilgrims, oranges, gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of tissue paper In the most decent sometimes sun There is the softsmoke feeling from urns And the canned sound of old battleplanes And if you go inside and run your finger along the window ledge, you’ll find dirt, maybe even earth And if you look out the window, there will be the day And as you get older you’ll keep looking, keep looking Sucking your tongue in a little Ah, ah, no, no, maybe
I love this poem. Like any poem that resonates, it does so in one’s own heart, head, and hands
connecting us to the world around us, for good or bad.
Machines are an extension of who we are. When produced by the right values,
the result will be the right thoughts. “Right thoughts produce right actions and
right actions produce work, which will be a material reflection for others
to see of the serenity at the center of it all,” understanding that we’re connected with everything.
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Snow At Windy Point Vista, Tucson, Arizona — Photo-Artistry by kenne
When I think of the historical Christ, I think of courage:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
This posting is the first of several I will be sharing from a long poem written by Tom
sometime around 1980 after his wife left him. Today is the fifth anniversary of his death.
24 to Harwood and Cropsy: No Road Back Home (Taken from a Brooklyn Bus Route and the Title of a Blues Album.)
Standing above me in Smith's roomAwkwardly looking down through a clipped hesitancyOur lives came together.TURNERWith all the ambiguity that last name usage impliesWas what she called me.Mannerisms of ingenuousness and a tendency toward the atypicalBespoke your ambiance
(Ineffably I wanted Her)That voice -FalsettoLaced in bursts of Peter's guffawsSeemed contrived with a dreamed-of authenticity.
(Your mouth, my love,the
thistle in the kiss?)
From within mutually cancellingVignettes of naturalness and gender-cliche'She kissed through closed lips ofPristine openness.Innocently I loved.Through summer notes of vulnerabilityTogether we embraced an entangled growth of uncertainty
(Our fictions were tempered in
a painful and inward time)Desperate needs equivocated against ordained directions andDead-end holdings of night-bakery-work.Even then yours wasn't other-directed butA need to keep the Self-absorption of your Ann Arbor soul on a
Pedastal of conforming difference.Eliptically we lived in the intersticesBetween an illusion of Fulfillment and letters etched with"Know what?"
Growing up, I recall an old-timer Who was poor, but knew the truth The difference between right and wrong Telling me to take whatever comes, Moving on down the river Like a drifting boat — Drift on my friend, drift on.
Self-portrait (Photo-Artistry)
Sabino Canyon — Panorama by kenne
Snow At Windy Point Vista, Tucson, Arizona — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Windmill On Hope Camp Trail — Image by kenne
East Texas Sunset — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Lake Titicaca Sunset — Image by kenne
