the dharma blog

I wish I was a better blogger, but I’m not. I like corresponding with you via this vehicle, posting thoughts and observations about things which seem important in life right now. It is good to put the words together, for it forces me to find some structure to the seemingly random cycles and acyclical events of humanity and ecology.

Not even photos have ever proven able to capture memory like writing and the act of have. My “true evolution to writer” happened when the act of writing became equal to the product. Writing is a means to make sense, to make art of reality, to make sure certain things do not slip by unnoticed, unremarked, unappreciated, and thus it is something done, rather than something that is.

It is a narrow path to walk. At times I have found my inclination toward written record superseding the living of the life itself. Or even if that’s not true, one is led to believe that constant documenting is in opposition to doing. Or that the mark of true greatness is to be able to do both equally, but yet more fully than mere mortals. Or not. Like I was saying, it is a narrow path to keep one’s footing on.

This weekend brought winter. The air is now dry and frozen, the dark sudden and deep. Six o’ clock feels like the middle of the night and mornings it is an ordeal to extract one’s self from flannel sheets and down comforter. I spent Saturday afternoon washing the big windows in the back of our house. I removed the screens and scrubbed the glass inside and out. They needed it badly and as I cleaned them it was like rubbing fog out from sleepy eyes and I could see outside little pieces of snow wobbling down to Earth, scattered against the sky and the dark green of the white pine in the backyard.

This was not the snow of last week, a sloppy rain-like precipitation that was really a last autumn rain just a little late, moistening dead leaves and making puddles for Lola to slosh through on our morning walk. Saturday’s snow was dry winter snow, sparse and sparing, and I watched the flakes fall to the ground as I washed the windows.

I listened to the stereo quite loudly as I worked; I was all alone for the afternoon. The music sounded great, clear as the cleaned windows and an unequivocal joy to know that when all else is stripped away, there is always music. The afternoon went by as such. No morn nor eve considered, just the gray afternoon, the task at the hand, and the rock and roll on the stereo.