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January 28, 2000

Each breath is a new beginning.
This very moment is the New Year.
-Robert Aitken

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_________________________________________________ ON THE MENU

CoCKTaiLs
* Avocado -Gary Snyder

MAIN COURSE
* Boys Build Forts -Roger Fanning
* selected Cold Mountain Poems -Han Shan

BLUE PLATE SPECIAL
* Harriet -Cynthia Zarin
* 28 -Jim Harrison

HEARD AT TABLE
* Neal Crosbie
* Suzie Rashkis
* Q & A

___________________________________________________ CoCKTaiLs

The Dharma is like an Avocado!
Some parts so ripe you can't believe it,
But it's good.
And other places hard and green
Without much flavor,
Pleasing those who like their eggs well-cooked.

And the skin is thin,
The great big round seed
In the middle,
Is your own Original Nature--
Pure and smooth,
almost nobody ever splits it open
Or ever tries to see
If it will grow.

Hard and slippery,
It looks like
You should plant it-- but then
It shoots out thru the
Fingers--
gets away.

-Gary Snyder from Turtle Island

_________________________________________________ MAIN COURSE


Petrified teeth from some fierce -osaurus,
the rocks my friend Donny and I piled up
in the middle of a field to build a fort.
The wind through its chinks made a desolate sound
I loved. We could have been out on the tundra,
bone-tired from tracking musk oxen all day.
It thrilled me to crouch in a cow pasture
and dream I could live here. I pictured
a cook fire, a skillet, two fried eggs
agog at my good fortune . . . Years later,
during puberty, I saw Charles Atlas
ads in the back of my comic books
and thought those muscles would look fine
on me. It was the same idea of building
a fort, the same ideal of self-sufficiency . . .
Of course it's a crock. My parents are gone.
They left me a furnished house, everything
I pictured for my fort, and more: mildew
that wears marching boots, a roof that leaks, I see
how thing stand. I see how people get sick.
Every body that walks this earth
and all the ways we try to feel safe:
all are bound to fall apart. My sweet father
and mother, both dead. That cold creeps in
and I feel as though a bear has torn
my chest open, and ravaged the frail
honeycomb built there by my folks,
and left me in a field to fill with snow.

-Roger Fanning from The New Yorker


Spring-water in the green creek is clear
Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white
Silent knowledge-- the spirit is enlightened of itself
Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness.

In my first thirty years of life
Roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.
Tried drugs, but couldn't make Immortal;
Read books and wrote poems on history.
Today I'm back at Cold Mountain:
I'll sleep by the creek and purify my ears.

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail.
In summer, ice doesn't melt
The rising sun blurs in swirling fog.
How did I make it?
My heart's not the same as yours.
If your heart was like mine
You'd get it and be right here.

Some critic tried to put me down--
"Your poems lack the Basic Truth of Tao"
And I recall the old-timers
Who were poor and didn't care.
I have to laugh at him,
He misses the point entirely,
Men like that
Ought to stick to making money.

-Han Shan
trans. Gary Snyder from Riprap, & Cold Mountain Poems

_______________________________________ BLUE PLATE SPECIAL


Why did I say what I did to Harriet?
She was my age, nine, I don't think ten--
a kind of taunting I'd not do again.
Not to Harriet, who for me still
limps up the hill, jacket torn, stained skirt rent.
Harriet who wasn't beautiful yet.
Monster is what the mirror said to me--
I opened my mouth and Harriet fled.
Now those words are breath, there's no sound
but the hissing wind in the wild trees
and Harriet falling, as she didn't then.

-Cynthia Zarin The New Yorker Nov 1, 1999



Lin-chi says, having thrown away your head so long
ago, you go on and on looking for it in the wrong
places. The head's future can be studied in a spadeful
of dirt. The delightful girl I loved 40 years back
now weighs, according to necrologists, 30 lbs. net.
Why does she still swim in the eddy in the river's
bend?

-Jim Harrison from After Ikkyu and Other Poems


______________________________________________ HEARD AT TABLE


My own opinion is that the void begins to wear on you.
- Neal Crosbie from the pages of Tricycle

My parents went through the bardo and all I got was this stupid T-shirt.
- Suzie Rashkis from the pages of Tricycle


Q: How many writers, raconteurs and magazines does it take to make an authentically American Zen?

A: None. It's just people doing zazen.

I don't know how I do it. I just do it!
-koji ono
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