Bob Schwartz

Sun rises behind the hill
Sets behind the mountains
Sitting in the middle
I see the arc of a bright yellow bird
Fire above
Fire below
As the earth turns

© 2024 by Bob Schwartz

“During times of darkness and danger people should cling to one another. When they do, things get brighter.”

Hexagram 30
Li – Brightness

The left half of this ideograph is an ancient animal named li; the right half is an ancient bird with bright yellow feathers called zhui.

The ancients picked the bright color of the bird to signify the character Li; thus, Li symbolizes brightness, though that is not its literal meaning. It is associated with Fire, the sun, and the most yang energy….

When falling into darkness, one is certain to attach to something. Thus, after Darkness comes attaching to each other and to Brightness.

The structure of the gua is Fire above, Fire below. The attribute of Fire is attachment as well as brightness. When two Fire gua are combined, the Brightness is doubled. During times of darkness and danger people should cling to one another. When they do, things get brighter.

Taoist Master Alfred Huang

Some years I post about Labor Day, both on the date of the American holiday today and on May 1, which is Labor Day in the rest of the world.

Reviewing those past posts, I found one from 2017 about the International Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies. The IWW was the most widespread radical labor movement in American history, its viewpoint reflected in the vintage IWW image above.

I have also posted about Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most dynamic writers and political journalists of his (or any) era. His politics and philosophy were unclassifiable. He had the clear-eyed vision of someone askew, the talent to describe it unforgettably, and the mad courage to not give a fuck about what he said or how he said it. If Hunter is observing and writing from heaven and/or hell, let’s pray there is someone who can channel his coverage of the Trump years and campaigns.

Back to Labor Day and the IWW. As the quote above shows, Thompson’s experience taught him that American politics might lack sufficient humanity. And that organized labor might have the power to inject some of that into it.

Whether or not one agrees with the IWW analysis and criticism of capitalism, it seems apparent that American politics might do with some humane correctives. And that organized labor might help.

Happy Labor Day!

During his presidency, Trump certifiably told at least 10,000 lies (look it up).

If it was a drinking game, a drink for each lie, that would have meant taking almost seven drinks a day on average over four years.

He’s told a lot of lies since then, and its increasing on the campaign trail. As usual, the lies range from the nonsensical to the disgusting. One he just repeated is that in Democratic states that allow abortions, the law allows not only abortion for the entire pregnancy but even allows the execution of newborns. As with many of the things he says, you might shout back at the screen in anger—not only because he says it, but because there are millions of supporters who believe it.

Don’t be angry when you hear these lies. Don’t drink every time you hear one. If you had taken seven drinks a day for the four years of the Trump presidency, you might not even be here. If you do it now, you might not make it through the campaign.

Instead, every time you hear or read a Trump lie, allocate a dollar donation to the Harris campaign for each lie, or more if you can afford. You can also include lies told by Vance, though as a relatively new and inept candidate, he is an amateur compared to Trump. That way, even as Trump continues to poison the public water, you can help detoxify it.

We live with a lot of creatures in the desert. I am partial to coyotes, and I love to see lizards of various sizes skittering around. A few weeks ago, a lizard less than one inch long emerged from the kitchen drain when I started water in the sink. It was confused and wet, so I carried it outside, where it surely dried off quickly—and skittered away.

Roadrunners are special. They appear, naturally, on the roads, but also in yards, and often on our back deck (see above). They are considered good luck. Notice that their feet are X-shaped. This makes them hard to track, because we can’t tell from footprints whether they are coming or going.

Imagine if our feet were symmetrical and had toes on both ends. Anyone tracking us through the sand, mud or snow couldn’t tell whether we were coming or going.

We might or might not know whether we are coming or going. Roadrunners know whether they are coming or going. X marks the spot.

© 2024 by Bob Schwartz

Food for thought

Inspired by Chinul

Neither farmer
Nor grocer
Nor cook
Some of all.
Earth
To market
To kitchen
To table.
Is it nutritious?
How does it taste?

© 2024 by Bob Schwartz

Chinul (1158–1210). A Korean Sŏn monk of the Koryŏ period (918–1392) who worked to reform the monastic order and provide a rationale for Son practice. Observing that the commercialization of monastic activities (in the form of fortune-telling, services for paying clients, and so on) had brought many into the order for questionable motives, he sought to create a reform group called the ‘concentration and wisdom society’, which found a home when he established the Sŏngwang Temple on Mt. Chogye. At the same time, he concerned himself with theoretical issues relating to the controversy between *gradual and *sudden enlightenment, and the relationship between meditative experience and doctrinal/textual studies. In the former case, he adopted the typology of the Chinese Ch’an and Hua-yen master Tsung-mi (780–841), which advocated sudden enlightenment followed by a gradual deepening and cultivation as the norm. In order to serve this purpose, he proposed *meditation on *kōans as the best method of practice. As to the latter, he advised that Korean Son not follow the example of the more extreme trends towards rejection of scriptural and doctrinal study exhibited by Chinese Ch’an, but that it keep the two together as an integrated whole. He was particularly interested in incorporating the Hua-yen philosophy of the Chinese lay hermit Li T’ung-hsüan (635–730) into Son practice as its basis and rationale. Chinul produced many eminent and accomplished disciples, and is arguably one of the most influential monks in the history of Korean Buddhism.

Damien Keown, A Dictionary of Buddhism

Watering dead flowers

For the Flower Lady

She said water the dead flowers
When the desert summer passes
They will come back in beauty.
Like in the Bible I said.
Water the dead flowers.

© 2024 by Bob Schwartz

Fire dance

For J

Grab the fire stick tight
And dance.
Fist inches
From the flame.
Who needs the hand
When the feet move
The body flows.
Alive.