Excuse Me For Not Dying

Excuse Me For Not Dying

 Mistah Kurtz—he dead (Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness) The remark “excuse me for not dying”, which Leonard Cohen attributes to his Zen teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, is one of those deceptively simple Zen statements that opens up the whole question of life,...
The Anti-Jazz Of Epic Fury

The Anti-Jazz Of Epic Fury

 Referring to the character Horacio Oliveira in Julio Cortizar’s masterpiece novel Hopscotch, one reviewer wrote:He often asks himself how it is possible that humans as a genus, as a species, as an ensemble of civilizations, have arrived at the present day by...
In Like A Lion, Out Like A Lamb

In Like A Lion, Out Like A Lamb

   I’m hopelessly stuck in the sixties, seventies and eighties. That’s as far as I go unless I’m forced to function in the present as I am today. I’m pretty good with technology, I guess. I majored in math and economics. God know’s why, as they say, those who believe....
The Anatomy of Saudade

The Anatomy of Saudade

 It is a wet, quiet, cold, and somewhat dreary day. My thoughts flex inward like a flock of parakeets with heads tucked under their wings, voices muffled as they speak an instant already gone. Life feels off balance, stuck between a past that can be revisited but...