Mindfulness

It’s all glass half full

or glass half empty

with me.

For some it’s the chicken

or the egg.

Or flip the other

side of the coin

if you can’t always get what you want.

If you can’t boil it down

to twenty-five words or less

maybe I could paint you a picture

worth a thousand words.

Jesus wept.

You have to drag the mountain to Mohammed.

You can lead a horse to water,

but you can’t beat it with a stick.

The pen is mightier,

but it’s not your father’s AK-47.

You could have had a V8.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

but it’s darkest before the dawn.

It may all have been said before,

but you haven’t walked to the river in my shoes.

As the Buddha said,

close your mouth and empty your mind

of all that nonsense,

and breathe.

On a Rainy Saturday Afternoon

As I approached the Dusty Bookshelf,

I saw a silver-haired man carrying four, heavily-weighted, shopping bags.

As he passed me, I glanced down.

All books.

Either he had been trying to sell them, and failed;

or, perhaps, he was a man with a fertile imagination

and was stocking up for a long winter

without TV or the internet;

or perhaps he was merely fertile,

and had just completed his Christmas shopping

for his many children, grandchildren,

and, perhaps, great-grandchildren.

He was smiling.

You tell me.

Young Minds

 

Packs of kids hang out up and down downtown Lawrence.

Too young to drive. Too young to vote.

Sex and alcohol barely beyond their reach.

School their job.

Their lessons: showing up on time

and being quiet.

Here along Mass. Street they laugh and step all over each other’s words.

They wander directionless –

supervising themselves.

Some practice that trick of popping their skateboard up into the air

and trying to land on it with both feet when it descends.

One day I happened upon a cluster of kids,

hanging around the Peace Pole in South Park.

A boy was jerking the pole back and forth,

as if to loosen it and pull it out.

A girl was kicking at it.

I walked over.

“Kind of a dumb thing you’re doing,” I said.

“That’s offensive,” a smart-mouthed girl replied.

“Is it?” I asked.

“Not really,” she answered.

I continued to chide them,

more with my presense as an adult,

than any words they might have heard.

Then the girl said,

“We’re just kids, we have small minds.”

“That’s not much of an excuse,” I said,

as I walked away.

But what I wish I could have said was:

“Take care – and have fun.”

But they would likely have taken

even that wistful blessing as more admonition –

not gentle guidance.

They’re already recognizing that

small minds tend more often to occur in grownups.

And they can’t be expected to understand

the distinction that, rather than small,

kid’s minds are open -

if sometimes empty -

as they linger between innocence and responsibility.

But it would be useless

to try warn these kids,

killing what little time they have left,

that all the things they now think they’re missing out on

will rob them of their bliss.

Yesterday, as I walked past what used to be Penny Annies,

a former magnet for after-school kids,

I saw a boy hit a crack with the wheels of his skateboard

and sprawl headlong off onto the sidewalk.

It occurred to me that he was lucky to avoid breaking his neck.

His friends turned and skated back to him,

laughing.

“Take care – and have fun,”

I said, wordlessly, as I walked on, unnoticed.

Colors

Sunset January 2, 2012 Scheduled: 5:10 pm. Observed: a few minutes before.

Looking to the east over the Central Middle School football field just over the rim of gray, winter branches begins a near-mauve coloring, then rose, into peach, salmon, lighter pinks until the sky is blue – sky blue – the deepest blue overhead, most of the sky between east and west is clear blue sky, and as your gaze arcs over toward the west, yellows start to come into view as you look past the backlit flags on top of Fraser, becoming the yellowest the closest to the horizon that is closest to the sun, but never green, as we were taught the blending of blue and yellow should make in school. And none of the red tints that are rich in the east.

Who, what, where, how, why?

Reality Check

On New Year’s Day

I walked up Mass. Street. to the river.

I walked down the center double-yellow line

from 11^th Street to 6^th Street.

The silent storefronts rose up on either side of me

like a grand canyon.

The sun cleared the eastern edge of the world

and warmed the western rim of brick and stone.

I crossed over at 6^th and scaled the City Hall,

leaping up from one curved balcony to the next.

From the top, I dove in a perfect arc,

over the train tracks,

over the Bowersock Powerplant,

into a deep pool in the Kaw River.

Swimming quickly to the far side,

I bounded up the limestones

to the top of the levee

where I faced the sun

and shook the excess water out of my hair -

and walked back home

to take a hot shower

and change back

into my secret identity.