HAPPY APRICOTS

HAPPY APRICOTS

Q: What stops me from writing

happily about being happy?

A: Feeling I must write about

political crimes, lies, deceptions.

But I briefly find happiness

by picking up fallen apricots
during their very short season.

I’m smiling about them now.

(29 JUN 12, Santa Clara CA)v2

GINNY BRIGHTENS

GINNY BRIGHTENS

Ginny brightens

& rises, inviting

me to dance,

smiling happily.

I try my best to

follow her feet.

We swing,
we sway, 

we bounce.

She smiles

brightly.

as we dance

together.

I smile now
as I write this 

(29 JUN 12, Santa Clara CA)v3

BACK ON MY BIKE

w/thanks to Susan

Back on my black Shogun
again after almost a year,

I gradually work up a sweat

huffing & puffing from

Goodyear Tire whose mgr

cordially pumps its tires up,

then I ride to the nearby

Alvarez kiddie Park I'd
only walked to before,

after showing it to Ginny

& Susan, who’d urged me

to exercise every 3 days;

today counts as the 1st.

(27 JUN 12, Santa Clara CA)v3

July rides: to&from Grocery Outlet (=5mi.); to&from dentist =(2mi), to&from Safeway (1mi.)

.

Praying Deeply

When Canon Rev. Linda Taylor concludes a service, she says:
"those you love, & those who you have difficulty loving."

I've never heard that said in place of those you hate. It has me
thinking of the power of prayer as not being limited to oneself.,
but to those who you would never have thought of praying for,
like - one's enemies. Doing this may be long understood by
those who have prayed deeply all their lives. I've only begun
to pray deeply recently - for Ginny Zeitman & myself - but
today I began to pray for her son Dan who is behaving like her
irrational adversary. If my deep prayer is sincere I hope it may
affect him. My experience with him has been deeply negative -
he suspects &  hates me. If my deep prayer can transform that,
something new might come of it directly to Ginny's benefit .
This I hope & deeply pray.

INexact-itude

This year (2012), a few weeks after I’d turned 70 (21 MAY), my daughter Maya (52) sent me a book for Father’s Day (17 JUN): AGELESS MEMORY by Harry Lorayne. Why? I dare not ask.  Memory matters abound nowadays, lack of mastery of which constitute proof of dementia, Alzheimers’, etc. It's as though everyone’s under the microscope for proofs of debility. Why? To select-out the excess population? Probably. Has perfectibility ceded to rabid perfectionism? We now have to know so much more than we used to just to do our daily dozen. Now not fully mastering our increasingly complex living systems automatically chucks you into the trash can (see the computer file-dumping dynamic-image.) 

Today I spoke to a local telephone advice-nurse who didn’t know the difference between a terrorist & someone who terrorizes (terrifies) another. (Homonyms aren't synonyms.)That distinction must surely distort her advice & reports!  She may ‘process’ many advice calls per hour, but how many of them are seriously flawed with such inexactitude & unintended inexactness, which I think of as characteristic of California.

After my 1st few months here in northern California, I wryly reported back to Massachusetts Bay: “Californians seem to have invented inexactitude” (my variant) As a result, I value the minds of fellow NNEastern emigrants over native-born Californians. My advice to fellow NNEasterners:  ”When asking for directions, if you must ask a native-born Californian, try to also ask a non-Californian as well.” Try it. You'll often find it works. 

POSSIBLE

POSSIBLE

At 18, after signing up

at my local draft board, 

I said I wouldn’t serve

    after being inducted,

& began practicing Zen;

by 24, I beat the draft:

at my induction physical

by declaring myself a

‘covert homosexual.’

At 70, again in crisis,
I pray for help for Ginny
in protecting her from her son
Dan, determined to put her
in assisted living against her will.

I pray that once again what seems 

mpossible can be possible.

(09 JUN 12, Santa Clara CA)v3

tinnitis

tinnitis

Hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute,

daylight’s brightening crack
grows in intensity around

    [{my light-blocking drapes}]

distracting me from tinnitis’ buzzing,

my newest tribulation @ 70. Will it

never end? What can cure it?

(05 JUN 12, Santa Clara CA)v2