“How the water goes is how the earth is shaped.”

            -from “The Theory and Practice of Rivers” by Jim Harrison

Last week in Kabul one of Mother Theresa’s nuns from Calcutta drove a beat up Camry station wagon down the crowded street.  It was loaded with trinkets to sell at the bazaar to raise money for an orphanage.  She stopped the car and waved to me, saying, “I hope you brought lots of money!”  Then she drove away in a cloud of dust, her vail wafting from the window like a white and blue flag.    

“Do things for people not because of who they are or what they do in return, but because of who you are.”

            -Mother Theresa

CANTE JONDO

Sing a deep song

Of the death of things before
Copper mountains hiding
Under a blanket of new snow
Of the hundred women waiting all day
Their first would be their last
Deep song
A vote

Sing a deep song

Of the death of things before
Of the burning Afghan sun
Blotted by Kabul smoke

Sing a deep song

Of the birth of new questions
Why are we here

Why there’s no such thing as win

It seems when people die they are lonely although crave isolation.  But there is no alone in this place. 

“I cannot bear this passion and courage [when people care for the dying, when they honor the dead]”.

            -from the poem “The Theory and Practice of Rivers” by Jim Harrison

Change on the mind, transition.  There are painful things that enter dreams.  A life rearranged after this.  Perhaps this place has run its course although tonight is perfect, as delicate leaves fall on our shoulders like golden feathers.  Smoke drifts up the valley from brick kilns resembling towering stupas from a helicopter.  A furry hedgehog peaks from the darkness, then scurries across the gravel.  Cold fingers clutching papery habanos.    

There is something about the wind that I need.  Smoke from a cigar is wind made visible.  I wish I was back in that pink metal chair at the Blue Swallow Inn in Tucumcari to watch the vultures swirl, riding the wind, made visible.  A horribly beautiful black wind cyclone.

I haven’t seen a dog but I just heard a mongrel bark from the village beyond the perimeter wall.  Perhaps this is the only country where all dogs are mongrels.

We converted a chicken coop into a fancy dog house.  It had a window, a swinging door and a light.  But she preferred the 360 degree view from under the camping trailer, lying in cool grass.    

Another pair of boots for the cobbler.  Last week I walked so far, so slowly, I almost fell over.  The speed of life for me.  The speed life should be, while dreaming of roads and rambling, that September motorcycle ride across heaven, singing to the wind:

“The Weight” by The Band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSzL5-SPHM

 

Aquarelle by Henry Miller

“Why change?  I asked myself.  How wonderful to accept life on its own terms!  How wonderful to accept one’s own self!  Improvement.  I doubt that the word exists in their vocabulary.  And though it does exist in ours, it is difficult to see what of value has been accomplished through endless improvement.  Certainly the civilized man does not yield the image of contentment, either with himself or with his surroundings; nor is he more peaceable, more loving, more kindhearted.”

            -Henry Miller

“The necessity to analyze, to understand, to categorize, answers to some basic need in the onlooker.  He cannot rest suspended in thin air.  He must know, know the reason why, and in doing so he kills what he sees.”

-Henry Miller

“Pure reason leads nowhere, unless it be to the analysts couch.”

            -Henry Miller