SAVE THIS DATE & TIME!
OCTOBER 21, 2007, 7:00 P.M.
SACOPEE VALLEY FORUM FILM FESTIVAL
HORIZON’S BUILDING PRESENTS…
In a testimony to the power of tolerance, filmmaker Menachem Daum, his wife, and their sons travel to a Polish town where his father-in-law and his two brothers hid from the Nazis with a non-Jewish family for 28 months. After many years, the Muchas find the expression of gratitude they seem desperately to have desired, and the Daums tearfully piece together their history. Ultimately Daum's journey begins to heal wounds between the two families and provides a solid foundation from which to increase interfaith tolerance, within his own family and the world. to raw emotion.

Refreshments will be served & a time for discussion will follow. FMI: Denis at 625-4411 or dahrev@psouth.net

Remind them of this, & warn them before God that they are to avoid

wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.

So says whoever wrote the instructions to new pastors in 2^nd Timothy—

Avoid wrangling over words… Hmmmm… Isn’t that what writers & other thinkers do best? As both an avid reader & a compulsive writer I find that words are far & away our best means of communication. God’s first act of creation was to speak & the world burst into being. What were God’s thoughts in that eternal silence before all that we see about us came into being? There’s a concept in Chan Buddhism called huatou. Quoting from “Attaining the Way: A Guide to the Practice of Chan Buddhism,” Chan Master Sheng Yen says this: “The term huatou literally means ‘source of spoken words before they are uttered,’ or, ‘before the spoken word.’ This is an indirect way to point out that which is beyond language & concepts. This source is variously referred to in Buddhism as buddha-nature, self-nature, no-self, no-mind, & intrinsic wisdom,” --but you get the idea.

i was just thinking of the term "party line." when i was a boy, & yes i can remember that far back!, we had a 4-digit phone number & a party line we shared with a neighbor down the street-- luckily for us she was an elderly woman who didn't use the phone much, but i can remember times when my mother would want to call someone & hear her say, "well, i guess we'll need to wait until she's finished-- won't be long now..." when the woman died we didn't get another party. now party line is something one must hew to, adhere to. we need someone who will not want a party-line in the house, someone who is a maverick, but i'm afraid we'll get another party-liner-- probably hilary-- we need a dennis or a barak-- but they just don't hew--

jack wept

someone asked me where those three little guys at the top of the blog came from & who they were. i drew them to go along with a poem i wrote after purchasing the boxed cd set of kerouac's readings.

Wholeness Be Damned

I would have been happy

just listening to Jack read haiku

with Al Cohn & Zoot Sims

but I went ahead & read the liner notes

The notes told me that Sims & Cohn

just picked up & left after the set—

like just another gig, man.

And Jack set in a corner.

And Jack wept

thanks to colleen

i want to thank my daughter who helped me, no, who actually set up this web page for me. she said that blogging is easier than e-mailing. i'm not sure that's accurate for an old fool like myself, but i'll give the old college try!

has anyone read ferlinghetti's 'poetry as insurgent art' yet? "after a poetry reading, never submit to a question-and-answer session. poetry gets the listeners high. a q&a brings it all down to prose. do they ask a folk singer to explain his [or her] songs?

now that motorcycle seasons is drawing to a close in maine, it's time to edit our manuscripts!

for the next poetry reading in effingham, nh

The Last Time I Was Here

the last time i was here, this podium was pushed back

so that a guitar would fit up here

& i wondered how, in my motorcycle clompy boots,

lugging my considerable girth,

i wondered how, without turning red of face,

i would get to the reading place—

i thought i would be called next—

i noticed that one of the graces of arriving late

is that the first slot is always open,

with 18 or so others to follow.

i mumbled some silly platitude like someone

caught in an odd light.

katie McCarthy quietly said, “just push it forward,”

i do so & lo & behold, it rolled! it slowly creaked forward

like monty python’s trojan horse on an empty mission

i wondered at the devilish genius of it all.

what a marvelous weapon! a podium on wheels!

more formidable than the panzers of egypt & europe,

words for wheels, like ezekiel’s wheels of eyes within eyes,

all seeing, sadly rolling to exile.

more maneuverable, more stealthy

than the thunderous transports

we rode in ‘nam, i was impressed.

then i remembered—

words are the ultimate in maneuverability;

they last longer, run faster, & can change meanings,

in the twinkle of an eye, those very eyes within eyes;

‘in the beginning was the Word…’ everything follows the verb,

no wonder it’s on wheels.

djd 09.26.07