The Rockrose Moon (A Serial Fiction)
Part 12
Drives me crazy, not having titles and as it seems like I’ve completely taken over this blog from my kind publishers, I’m thinking you can assume unless stated otherwise that for the moment any posts here are by me. Stand by for titled entries, okay?
I’ve written so many poems inspired by the Chinese Garden it was like visiting a lost love yesterday, a love that has gone on and become something more than when you knew him. My favorite part was the Chinese Buddhist nun being shown around by her Western handler, the ubiquitous slim serious middle-aged follower.
The nun was full of fun and laughter as she was reading the banners with poems about spring and snow.
The two most impressive people I have ever “met” were Tibetan Buddhist practitioners. Gehlek Rimpoche , who looked like a bullet headed mobster in his black shirt and tie totally knocked my socks off and Tenzin Palmo who was born in England and is a Westerner who made the transition to fully ordained nun.
She is kind and funny and absolutely direct. When she looks at you she sees you. She has learned how to so get out of her own way.
I’m thinking about this Buddhist thing because of my dad and because of Peter. Before he got his doctorate in psychology he was a Buddhist monk living in the Zen center in LA. He gave up his vows, married and had a son, but he still teaches meditation and has a center and a group of fiercely loyal followers here.
He wears dark clothes all the time and has his hair close-cropped. I remember the first time I ever saw him I talked to him about Original Sin. I was explaining Christian to him, my Christian, not the religion and our poetic companionship.
Which was a lead in to talking about this workshop I was taking on how to make a prizewinning chapbook manuscript. It was truly awful.
Once a week at this woman’s expensive home in the burbs, upstairs in her writing space. There was only one guy, but of course he got the most respect, as he was a star student of David Bicycle, the head of the local writing workshop “space” called The Kitchen. Bicycle’s claim to fame was a shot at the US Olympic Curling team, not a bad poet, a beloved teacher. Our teacher had just published a chapbook of his work.
The star student was well off financially and a successful attorney in the “real” world. Some insurance company published a bunch of his truly mediocre poems in an insert in The New Yorker last year. I wonder how much he paid for that.
Anyway, I liked Peter and felt comfortable with him as he seemed to be most knowledgeable about the things a therapist should be knowledgeable about and he had a sense of humor and I wasn’t attracted to him and I got the vibe he was truly concerned about me and my poetry and my weird relationship to food which is why I was there in the first place.
Drives me crazy, not having titles and as it seems like I’ve completely taken over this blog from my kind publishers, I’m thinking you can assume unless stated otherwise that for the moment any posts here are by me. Stand by for titled entries, okay?
I’ve written so many poems inspired by the Chinese Garden it was like visiting a lost love yesterday, a love that has gone on and become something more than when you knew him. My favorite part was the Chinese Buddhist nun being shown around by her Western handler, the ubiquitous slim serious middle-aged follower.
The nun was full of fun and laughter as she was reading the banners with poems about spring and snow.
The two most impressive people I have ever “met” were Tibetan Buddhist practitioners. Gehlek Rimpoche , who looked like a bullet headed mobster in his black shirt and tie totally knocked my socks off and Tenzin Palmo who was born in England and is a Westerner who made the transition to fully ordained nun.
She is kind and funny and absolutely direct. When she looks at you she sees you. She has learned how to so get out of her own way.
I’m thinking about this Buddhist thing because of my dad and because of Peter. Before he got his doctorate in psychology he was a Buddhist monk living in the Zen center in LA. He gave up his vows, married and had a son, but he still teaches meditation and has a center and a group of fiercely loyal followers here.
He wears dark clothes all the time and has his hair close-cropped. I remember the first time I ever saw him I talked to him about Original Sin. I was explaining Christian to him, my Christian, not the religion and our poetic companionship.
Which was a lead in to talking about this workshop I was taking on how to make a prizewinning chapbook manuscript. It was truly awful.
Once a week at this woman’s expensive home in the burbs, upstairs in her writing space. There was only one guy, but of course he got the most respect, as he was a star student of David Bicycle, the head of the local writing workshop “space” called The Kitchen. Bicycle’s claim to fame was a shot at the US Olympic Curling team, not a bad poet, a beloved teacher. Our teacher had just published a chapbook of his work.
The star student was well off financially and a successful attorney in the “real” world. Some insurance company published a bunch of his truly mediocre poems in an insert in The New Yorker last year. I wonder how much he paid for that.
Anyway, I liked Peter and felt comfortable with him as he seemed to be most knowledgeable about the things a therapist should be knowledgeable about and he had a sense of humor and I wasn’t attracted to him and I got the vibe he was truly concerned about me and my poetry and my weird relationship to food which is why I was there in the first place.
posted by NokoRose at 10:31 AM
1 Comments:
I like dropping by Rose; I like to read what's going on in your head.
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