6-27-2010 0700 So yesterday we drove from Petoskey by Saginaw and Flint, turned left and headed for Canada, where we are now. We read Zen Mind Beginners Mind by Suzuki Roshi. I must admit that part of the impetus for doing this was Sala's mild exasperation with my mis appropriate of ideas about attachment. She has produced several impromptu perororations on the subject (under the general title of 'why are you saying these things' and 'you are really getting the basic idea wrong'. I think the most dramatic of the many dramatic turn of mind that it produced in me today was the section on the futility of trying to distinguish between what you are doing, and what you would rather be doing. It doesnt matter whether you call what you are doing by the time you are doing it, or the name of the activity. You can't really avoid the present moment. Not only are you whever you are, but what you are doing is exactly what you are doing. Another good section is the discussion of balance. Good art comes from an action out of balance, displayed against a totality of existence that is in perfect balance. He actually uses a construction that is very similar to Hopper's statement regarding creative activity...your own experience of nature.
Its certainly true that the artists I admire most are not trying to balance the whole universe, and not worried about being very assymetric. And when they are working, they are all there, and doing exactly what they are doing. In those moments when it works for me, at least, thats the way I feel.
Suzuki Roshi's thoughts also make contact in so many ways with a lot of what I've noticed in my own life. Its hard to maintain faith that students are able to teach themselves. Its relatively easy to simply appropriate that function, equating 'teacher' with 'controller'...and a slippery slope from there to assuming that therefore you have the responsibility for learning, not for teaching. The central faith needed for small group student centered process is recognizing that students CAN teach themselves...and CAN decide within a range what they prefer to study at a given time.
Before we left Petoskey yesterday, we toured the Bay View Association campus, up the hill fromt he lake and on the northern edge of town. This would be lake Michigan, and Petoskey lies on the shore of Little Traverse Bay. Beautiful sunsets. The end of the rail line, the beginning of another. Those items were all part of the considerations of the Wesleyan Methodists who decided to start an Encampment there for the purpose of cultural advance. Now its independently controlled by the people who own the houses and the land. White wooden buildings in a loop of road, surrounded by private houses, large, gingerbreaded, well kept green lawns. A little more clustered than usual for such large houses. Reminiscent of the little houses in Oak Bluffs on Marthas Vineyard...and indeed, begun with the same purpose. Next time you visit Petoskey, besure to check it out..not on the standard tourist route. And no dogs allowed on campus.
Yesterday we passed rapidly through Sarnia, which is the city just across from Port Huron, but in Canada. The first several miles are completely surrounded by noise abatement walls...like much of urban France...so I dont really know what Sarnia looks like. Sala remarks that there they forgot to add people to this country. I saw plenty of them in the official liquor store, the only place to buy alcohol in this Province. And they looked to be about the same as Amuricans, although the statistics say they are a little less obese. Sala also notes the fast food is different...served in tearooms...but just as nasty. London is an industrial city in central southern Ontario. It makes things...railway train engines and armored military transports to name just two. And yes the river is called the Thames, and yes the county is Middlesex and so on and so forth. The city itself, over 350,000 residents, is way past anything that could be called quaint. But there are lots of green commons, and it feels good to be in this land of freedom. And then down the road, is Toronto and all of the TV coverage you have been watching. I think not, for us.
Yes, and Port Huron was of course the name of the Statement that was the inception document for Students for Democratic Society. To whom I owe an undying gratitude, since if Tom had not drafted the Statement, and he and other other U Michigan and Harvard students had not met way back in '62, then the National Office would never have been established, and Clark and Helen would never have been running it, and Sala, then by a different name, would never have ended up working there after her time in Mississippi doing voter registration, and thus would not have answered the phone when I called to report on the busses I had organized from Rockefeller and Einstein to go to the March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam (March of 1965 I think). The Port Huron Statement hasnt lost any idealism and intentional ambiguity since...its still one of my favorite founding statements...right up there with the Declaration. Thanks, Tom.
Its hot, again. But not yet muggy. Yet. All that lies ahead. The Upper Peninsula looks better already, in hindsight. Perhaps we will be back to college driftwood from Lake Superior, or spend more time at the Pictured Rocks. But today, its more reading of Suzuki Roshi, more driving, and our long awaited (ab out 44 years now) nuptial trip to Niagra Falls.
love in the struggle
alan
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