Ryōkan Taigu DEWDROPS ON A LOTUS BLOSSOM

August 18, 2024 – 7:26 pm

Returning to my native village after many years’ absence:
Ill, I put up at a country inn and listen to the rain.
One robe, one bowl is all I have.
I light incense and strain to sit in meditation;
All night a steady drizzle outside the dark window—
Inside, poignant memories of these long years of
pilgrimage.

Ryōkan Taigu was a quiet and unconventional Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. Ryōkan is remembered for his poetry and calligraphy, which present the essence of Zen life. – wikipedia

This spring I found his book DEWDROPS ON A LOTUS BLOSSOM on a brownstone’s steps in Clinton Hill and read

Who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
When you know that my poems are not poems,
Then we can speak of poetry!

The Zen of Chance

See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dkan

By Peter | Posted in peace, Poetry | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

The Sin of Banality

August 18, 2024 – 9:12 am

“There is nothing more awful, depressing, and depressing than banality.”— Anton Chekhov

This quote was posted on Instagram by Eric Mitchell, famed B-Movie actor and self proclaimed Pittsfield slumlord.
Contemporary counter

“Banality is an unappreciated virtue along with hypocrisy.” – James Steele – fugitive

Banality statue by the king of banality, Jeff Koons

By Peter | Posted in greed, quotes | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Provincetown Lore – niizh manitoag

August 18, 2024 – 7:50 am

In the autumn of 1620 my antecedent, John Howland, crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower. Mid-voyage a storm washed passenger the indentured servant was overboard. He sank about 12 feet (4 m), but a crew member threw a rope, which Howland managed to grab, and he was safely hauled back onboard. The pilgrims landed after the prevailing winds prevented their sailing south to Virginia. The settlers left the peninsula, which the Nauset people called Meeshaun or ‘going by boat’. Seemed the Puritans were upset by native gays or niizh manitoag” (two spirits) the Algonquin term for transgender or homosexual genders. No one was said to see the back of the grim saganash or white men. We queers like our freedom offered by such dead end communities such as P-Town, Fire Island or Key West.

According to https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/ Tennessee Williams later described the four groups who made up Provincetown’s residents. He belonged to the first two: The flamboyant gay summer visitors and the elite artists and writers who came to write, paint, dance or act. Third, gay wash-ashores who came as visitors and stayed year-round to work or run businesses. Finally, the Yankee, Portuguese and mixed-race native gays.

The playwright Tennessee Williams, then 29, arrived in the summer of 1940. He joined a group “dominated by a platinum blonde Hollywood belle named Doug and a bull-dike named Wanda who [was] a well-known writer under a male pen name.” Ptown, he wrote, was “screaming with creatures not all of whom are seagulls.”

It remains a safe haven for sailors and other wanderers to this day.

By Peter | Posted in gay lesbian, history, New England | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

CHIMP CRAZY

August 16, 2024 – 11:08 am

Tuesday night I attended the HBO premiere of CHIMP CRAZY directed by Eric Goode.

I was struck in this film by how these chimp lovers desire the love of the chimps to satisfy an emptiness in their lives, while oblivious to the pain of their loved ones. Strangely their providers are also trapped in life, living in the same prison as correctional guards, all of them eating the same food they feed their charges. Fast food, as if this consumption might evolve to a more homo sapiens state, as has mankind thanks to the genetic modification of our world.

Back in the 1970s a college schoolmate had a chimp catptive in his basement. My good friend Neil and I went over to see Stevie’s pet. Both of us were shocked to see a grown chimp chained to the basement wall. Lunging at Stevie in vain attempts to kill his captor. Stevie finally freed the chimp to the Franklin Park Zoo. I still see his eyes wide-open in rage.

But as wicked as is the incarceration the film still showed the blindness of the love and there hurt after PETA rescues the last seven primates from Missouri Primate Foundation, an ape mill in Festus, Missouri. All other apes have been moved from the facility after its losing its permit. Acting pursuant to a court order, PETA this week removed all six of the remaining chimpanzees held at the former Missouri Primate Foundation (MPF) breeding compound in Festus, and they are now living at a Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries–accredited sanctuary.

The film touches on humor, outrage, and the realization that thousands of apes are prisoners all over the world. I remember Pattycake, the caged gorilla in the Central Park Zoo, who had been the zoo’s major attraction since her birth in 1972. Trapped without a twig of green in their enclosure. Nothing sadder than their eyes meeting yours.

CHIMP CRAZY doesn’t beat up on the owner or the care-giver. As stated in the film chimps are 94% human according to modern science. This episode suggests that chimps are more human than homo sapiens and people love them for our loss of humanity. If only they could be free, but they are trapped as are we by Man’s belief of superiority over other species and even our own.

Eric Goode has been involved in saving threatened animals around the world and I applaud this film for once more filming the shadowy world of wildlife trafficking.

Bravo.

ps Patty Cake was freed from Central Park to the Bronx Zoo’s Congo Gorilla Forest in 1982, where she gave birth to ten babies. Not free ever.

By Peter | Posted in film, Nature | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

B & H Dairy

August 16, 2024 – 10:19 am

Last evening my friend from the Yucatan and I had pirogis at the B&H, which opened in 1938. Feh. Velselkas is better. Afterwards as we walked down 2nd Avenue, I was struck by the many vacant retail spaces. Looked to be more than half. Tweren’t that way in the 70s. There was the Stage Deli, Gem Spa, Kiev, the Orchida, and the St. Mark’s Theater. Plenty of other establishments enlivened the avenue. Covid killed many, but nothing like the greed of the realtors. The first people to go in a revolution are landlords.

Although not those like Jerome Golding who owned 256 E 10th and the Fun Gallery. His loving wife invited me over for dinner, even when I was months behind in rent.

When Jerome rightfully harangued me for the late rent, sometimes as much as six months, his wife said, “Leave the boycek alone. He’s always good for it.”

He sighed and shrugged defeat. What a couple.

His wife outlived Jerome and was blessed to pass after eating blueberry blintzes at the end of Kaffee klatch with her friends. At Ratner’s Dairy on Delancey. Good people.

ps. The East Village will survived the curse of capitalism. There have to be other Jerome Goldings out there.

By Peter | Posted in Activities | Tagged , , | Comments (0)