There was an 8.9 quake in Japan, the largest in 140-something years. My girlfriend sent me some e-mails saying she is fine, and I called her, but now I can't connect to her at all. All the phonelines are busy and she is not responding to e-mail, they are probably not getting through. None of the trains in Tokyo are running so she, like many people, is crossing the whole city on foot.
Looking for breaking news on the quake, I checked out the internet.
I found a video of the tsunami on youtube.
The highest rated comment is this:
"Whales and dolphins 1 - Japan 0 , sort of evens things up a bit in the great scheme of things." from user 'zblmgtube'
Yup. Human lives vs. Dolphin lives, and the 'great scheme of things'.
Can we get an Imam's opinion up in here? Did we get this quake because Japanese women weren't following Sharia law? Or was it truly the vengeance of dolphin ghosts. I personally blame gay marriage!
Thanks Zblmgtube!
3.11.2011
3.05.2011
BIRTHDAY
On the last page of the Heart Sutra (Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom, Harper Collins, 1942, PG. 66), the Buddha, teaching on Vulture Peak, advises us to "Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse."
As any product of public education and public television I considered myself a Buddhist for most of my young life.
I write to you, friends, strangers, ghosts, to tell you that I find myself, today, incapable of following the Historical Buddha's advice. As of the end of this month, my birthday, I will no longer be capable of "d(ying) young." In the eyes of the law my extended youth ends in a matter of weeks.
Equally problematic: A freak genetic condition of my heel-cords plus corrective surgery rendered me incapable of "liv(ing) fast" since my elementary school days. Unless the word "fast" means immoral or promiscuous, still I can only account for a one year period in-between girlfriends in a city where the trains stop running but the bars stay open. When I wasn't at home staring into the space in and around the refrigerator I was being bullied into a taxi by the last creature left in the bar. And that's not "liv(ing)".
As for a "good looking corpse", I can honestly admit that as I age I grow more and more good looking. That is if I can fight back the skin diseases, lines, and other waiting humiliations. But will my corpse look good? I have no idea. And it is too late, at least, to leave a young looking corpse. At best, I wish someday to leave a confusing looking corpse. One that could dupe thieves into stealing my bones, mistaking them for something else. (See pg. 128, The Brihad A'Ranyaka Upanishad, Random House, 1978)
Because analysts have been telling me since 2007 that "China is the future", I thought very seriously about "living fast, dying old, and leav(ing) a Chinese-looking corpse." And though China may be the future, I thought about the Chinese past, and dreamed my corpse buried amongst armies of terracotta soldiers and enough paper money and paper facsimiles of human souls, to not only pay my way past Yama and the other kings of the dead, but to secure all of my descendants, grandchildren great and small, soul security into any possible future, Chinese or otherwise.
But these Chinese tomb dreams were interrupted by the deregulated realities of the Chinese present. Due to illegal corner cutting and the cutthroat nature of profit, the terracotta soldiers, funerary monies, and paper souls will no doubt be made from used condoms, petroleum, human factory misery, and human hair. (I doubt the kings of the underworld will accept counterfeit souls and money). And the tomb might collapse because of shoddy workmanship, using landfill cardboard instead of cement.
I would like to keep my corpse out of a future where you are either a slave in a funeral paper factory or a dead man in an opulent tomb made of spray-painted gold garbage.
Then how do I plan for the future?
As any product of public education and public television I considered myself a Buddhist for most of my young life.
I write to you, friends, strangers, ghosts, to tell you that I find myself, today, incapable of following the Historical Buddha's advice. As of the end of this month, my birthday, I will no longer be capable of "d(ying) young." In the eyes of the law my extended youth ends in a matter of weeks.
Equally problematic: A freak genetic condition of my heel-cords plus corrective surgery rendered me incapable of "liv(ing) fast" since my elementary school days. Unless the word "fast" means immoral or promiscuous, still I can only account for a one year period in-between girlfriends in a city where the trains stop running but the bars stay open. When I wasn't at home staring into the space in and around the refrigerator I was being bullied into a taxi by the last creature left in the bar. And that's not "liv(ing)".
As for a "good looking corpse", I can honestly admit that as I age I grow more and more good looking. That is if I can fight back the skin diseases, lines, and other waiting humiliations. But will my corpse look good? I have no idea. And it is too late, at least, to leave a young looking corpse. At best, I wish someday to leave a confusing looking corpse. One that could dupe thieves into stealing my bones, mistaking them for something else. (See pg. 128, The Brihad A'Ranyaka Upanishad, Random House, 1978)
Because analysts have been telling me since 2007 that "China is the future", I thought very seriously about "living fast, dying old, and leav(ing) a Chinese-looking corpse." And though China may be the future, I thought about the Chinese past, and dreamed my corpse buried amongst armies of terracotta soldiers and enough paper money and paper facsimiles of human souls, to not only pay my way past Yama and the other kings of the dead, but to secure all of my descendants, grandchildren great and small, soul security into any possible future, Chinese or otherwise.
But these Chinese tomb dreams were interrupted by the deregulated realities of the Chinese present. Due to illegal corner cutting and the cutthroat nature of profit, the terracotta soldiers, funerary monies, and paper souls will no doubt be made from used condoms, petroleum, human factory misery, and human hair. (I doubt the kings of the underworld will accept counterfeit souls and money). And the tomb might collapse because of shoddy workmanship, using landfill cardboard instead of cement.
I would like to keep my corpse out of a future where you are either a slave in a funeral paper factory or a dead man in an opulent tomb made of spray-painted gold garbage.
Then how do I plan for the future?
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