Blogs are comparable to the commonplace books that first began appearing among the literate in 15th century Europe. Today millions of bloggers keep their modern day commonplace books for many of the same reasons that 15th century Europeans kept theirs. Easily obtained, inexpensive paper made it possible for 15th century writers to begin recording their observations, notes, and favorite quotes into commonplace books. Today easy access to the broadband internet makes it possible to continue the commonplace tradition in digital form, compiling not only written documents, but documents created in many other types of digital media as well.

McCluhan’s “the medium is the message,” “global village,” and Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” become more relevant with each passing decade. Six centuries after the appearance of the first commonplace books, millions continue the tradition of recording in the paperless, digital blogosphere thoughts, essays, favorite quotations, and miscellaneous observations on art, music, culture, politics, and life in general. But unlike the paper commonplace book, with the internet-based “commonplace book” or blog, we can instantly read each other and leave behind our comments and reactions.

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From The Book of Elf, chapter 108 (8th Kalpa BBB)

According to the absolute, non-dual teachings of Shankara, Buddha, and Apostle Paul (”not I, but Christ”) there are no elves.

But in the relative teachings of Bahkti, Bodhicitta and Agape—there are indeed elves—suffering and deluded though they may be. This relative view is what motivates the tears and compassion of the human Saints and Bodhisattvas, what motivates them to minister and serve suffering elves.

The Ultimate teaching of the Flower Garland or Avatamsaka Sutra clearly allows for the existence of elves: non-human cosmologies abound in the Avatamsaka—worlds are described as populated not only by elves, but by countless other forms of sentient life as well.

Elf phrases, book titles, and such like:

Me, my elf and I.
Get away with your bad elf.
Are you an elf starter?
Do you talk to your elf?
Kierkegaard suffered from elf-consciousness
The elf and modern society
Don’t lie to your elf.
Do people think you’re elfish?

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The Buddha used various images and illustrations to convey a sense of the immense stretch of time — called a kalpa — that might encompass the birth and evolution of universe after universe. Here are a few.

Suppose an eagle’s wing brushes against the top of a high mountain once a century. A kalpa is how long it would take for that action to wear the mountain entirely away.

Suppose a wooden yoke with one hole, is thrown into the ocean to float. If a one-eyed turtle rises to the surface of the ocean once a century, a kalpa is how long it would take before the turtle just happened to rise through the hole of the yoke.

Suppose that every hundred years a piece of silk is rubbed once on a solid rock one cubic mile in size; when the rock is worn away by this, one kalpa will still not have passed.

Suppose, said the Buddha, that there was a huge rock of one solid mass, one mile long, one mile wide, one mile high, without split or flaw. And at the end of every 100 years a man should come and rub against it with a silken cloth. Then that huge rock would wear off and disappear quicker than a Kalpa.

Suppose a celestial woman touched a 10 cubic mile stone with her garments once every three years. A kalpa is longer than the time it would take to wear the stone to a mere pebble.

These images of inconceivable lengths of time - kalpas - are, to me, strangely comforting, liberating, soothing.

I get similar pleasure from looking through my binoculars or telescope at galaxies and star clusters in the Milky Way on a warm summer’s night.

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In the first century C.E. Ovid gave “Mother Earth” an important, dramatic role in his account of the story of Phaëthon and his unsuccessful, presumptuous attempt to assume his father’s place and steer the sun.

As Phaëthon scorches her forests and boils her brother’s seas—as they continue to burn and boil—she cries out in pain and disbelief:

The Earth at length, on ev’ry side embrac’d
With scalding seas that floated round her waste,
When now she felt the springs and rivers come,
And crowd within the hollow of her womb,
Up-lifted to the Heav’ns her blasted head,
And clapt her hand upon her brows, and said
(But first, impatient of the sultry heat,
Sunk deeper down, and sought a cooler seat):
“If you, great king of Gods, my death approve,
And I deserve it, let me die by Jove;
If I must perish by the force of fire,
Let me transfix’d with thunder-bolts expire.
See, whilst I speak, my breath the vapours choak
(For now her face lay wrapt in clouds of smoak),
See my singe’d hair, behold my faded eye,
And wither’d face, where heaps of cinders lye!
And does the plow for this my body tear?
This the reward for all the fruits I bear,
Tortur’d with rakes, and harrass’d all the year?
That herbs for cattle daily I renew,
And food for Man, and frankincense for you?
But grant me guilty; what has Neptune done?
Why are his waters boiling in the sun?
The wavy empire, which by lot was giv’n,
Why does it waste, and further shrink from Heav’n?
If I nor he your pity can provoke,
See your own Heav’ns, the Heav’ns begin to smoke!
Shou’d once the sparkles catch those bright abodes,
Destruction seizes on the Heav’ns and Gods;
Atlas becomes unequal to his freight,
And almost faints beneath the glowing weight.
If Heav’n, and Earth, and sea, together burn,
All must again into their chaos turn.
Apply some speedy cure, prevent our fate,
And succour Nature, ere it be too late.”
She cea’sd, for choak’d with vapours round her spread,
Down to the deepest shades she sunk her head.

Ovid, Metamorphoses Book II, “Phaëthon,” Tr. John Dryden, et al

Or, if you like, a prose version,

Nevertheless, kindly Earth, surrounded as she was by sea, between the open waters and the dwindling streams that had buried themselves in their mother’s dark womb, lifted her smothered face. Putting her hand to her brow, and shaking everything with her mighty tremors, she sank back a little lower than she used to be, and spoke in a faint voice ‘If this pleases you, if I have deserved it, O king of the gods, why delay your lightning bolts? If it is right for me to die through the power of fire, let me die by your fire and let the doer of it lessen the pain of the deed! I can hardly open my lips to say these words’ (the heat was choking her). Look at my scorched hair and the ashes in my eyes, the ashes over my face! Is this the honour and reward you give me for my fruitfulness and service, for carrying wounds from the curved plough and the hoe, for being worked throughout the year, providing herbage and tender grazing for the flocks, produce for the human race and incense to minister to you gods?

Even if you find me deserving of ruin, what have the waves done, why does your brother deserve this? Why are the waters that were his share by lot diminished and so much further from the sky? If neither regard for me or for your brother moves you pity at least your own heavens! Look around you on either side: both the poles are steaming! If the fire should melt them, your own palace will fall! Atlas himself is suffering, and can barely hold up the white-hot sky on his shoulders! If the sea and the land and the kingdom of the heavens are destroyed, we are lost in ancient chaos! Save whatever is left from the flames, and think of our common interest!

Ovid, Metamorphoses Book II, “Phaëthon,” Tr. Anthony S. Kline

The earth again, 2,000 years later, is trembling in fear, pain, and disbelief. Listen carefully, especially at night, do you hear?

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CHICAGO
by Timothy Sandberg
March 2008

Wind-blasted brick buildings spilling out
Out from the steel and glass monoliths of down-town.
Not by the formidable stone of the great museums nor
Standing before the scope of the grand modern sculptures,
But on a weary train, almost empty, heading north
Out of the Warzone,
Here it is quiet enough to hear the city’s music.
Frost-beaten brick tenements the color of dry blood
Sighing steam and warm grey smoke from chimney pipes,
Sad-eyed buildings watch the CTA crawl to and fro
in the flurries.

The city is slow; sleepy neighborhoods like someone
dropped Spain in the snowy north, clad her in bricks,
and announced the two o’clock hour.

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Yes, I do like Starbucks. And I hang out in Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstore cafes for hours on end. But there is nothing like a real, independently run coffeehouse. Here are some shots of one of my favorites that I stop in on my way to and from Joshua Tree—The Water Canyon Coffeehouse. Always interesting music on tap too.

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Only two years since my last visit. And, this time in winter. It snowed a beautiful 6 inches two days into our 5 day visit giving Marcia, Tim, and Lin a glimpse and feel of a Chicago winter.

Have a look:

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Good bye Martha. My first cousin Martha Hollis passed away December 16. She’d been Christmas shopping with her daughter, Jeanette, at the Brea Mall last Saturday, the 15th. That evening she suddenly felt ill, was hospitalized, then unexpectedly passed away Sunday.

Whatever you may think or believe about the reality of angels, we all know what qualities they symbolize. Martha had all of them.

Martha was my 1st cousin, yet she was just a few years younger than my mother her beloved Ruthie who passed away Christmas 2005. Now they are both gone; they were like sisters. Without Martha’s help eight years ago I would have never found, or would have had a much harder time finding a really nice residential nursing home for mom when Alzheimer’s took over.

Of all my extended family, Martha was my favorite. She lived in constant pain from a complication related to general anesthesia administered in a mastectomy surgery some 20 years ago. But, she, literally, never complained. Her hair never grew back from the chemo, yet she always looked the fashion plate with her makeup, wig, choice of clothes. Being in her home at Christmas made you feel the wonder-filled with her handmade decorations and beautifully lit and decorated tree. At her memorial today, her Baptist minister read a beautiful poem, Christmas in Heaven - as if we needed more encouragement to weep - but I’m glad he read it. It suited Martha. We sang Martha’s favorite hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

There were scores of her friends at the service. She was intensely involved in local community work, especially working with the elderly and sick. They will have a very hard time finding someone to replace her. She was their voice in local politics and would drive many of them to doctor’s appointments and take them shopping.

Life is sweet, but so so so brief. Enough.

I’m including the Christmas in Heaven poem below.

Good bye Martha. You and your Ruthie will never be apart again.

Read the rest of this entry »

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While a graduate student in English at Northwestern (late 70s early 80s), I had the good fortune to study with Gerald Graff and get acquainted with the criticism wars that were beginning to rage. If Graff had lived oh, say, 2,447 years ago, he and Socrates would have given each other much to think about. Like Socrates, Graff practices a method of query-based discussion or dialectic in which no one is allowed to finally rest in or on any single theory, image, or conclusion.The conversation can always continue. Graff has taught the conflicts or controversies from the earliest days of his career, long before the practice was coined as a slogan by various individuals and groups.

I agree to a point with those who consider it unfortunate that religious fundamentalists have co-opted Graff’s phrase, “teaching the controversies,” in their efforts to get creationist mythology (intelligent design) taught in public school science courses. But consider what violence religious fundamentalists of all faiths have resorted to when discussion stops. So, by all means, let the controversies continue to be taught and discussed, by everyone. The only way to determine whether someone or some idea is right or wrong is to test it in the laboratory of discussion. So let the discussions continue: teach those controversies! bring on the conflicts!

If I had continued with literary theory as a professional interest, Graff’s query-based, Socratic approach is most certainly the one I would have taken: not identifying with any one school of criticism, but, instead, continually questioning each school’s assumptions, methods, and conclusions. Taking such an approach you risk angering and alienating, but, what was it they called Socrates . . . oh yeah, a gadfly.

Let the controversies and the conversations continue.

I am sure I am not alone in saying thank you, Professor Graff.

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Having moved beyond the arid speculations and nihilistic gibberish of logical positivism and deconstruction (respectively) some academic philosophers are once again addressing big questions. Questions like: What is the meaning of life? Listening to a Philosophy Bites interview with John Cottingham on my way to Joshua Tree this morning I was graced with his insightful thoughts on how a philosophy that would lead to a sense of meaning in one’s life should accommodate the inevitable vagaries and uncertainties of life � illness, old age, death. That simple observation, suggestion led to a new, if subtle, insight.

I have had similar insights about living and meaning in the past, but from Buddhist and other eastern teachers, never from a philosopher speaking from a western philosophical point of view. There may be a way for east and west to meet after all.

It is easy to be discouraged when one encounters or has been subject to limiting contingencies, lost opportunities, unrealized dreams, paths not taken, failures of various sorts � we all have them. But if one has a “philosophy” that acknowledges and accommodates them, one can move on.

I’ll hang on to that one.

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