Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, " I do not want to live on as a shadow of myself. " What is so wrong with my shadow? If there's something wrong with it it's only because there's something wrong with my Self.  If I see in my shadow someone fat and lazy I surely don't want this Self of me, not now, not later, hopefully never.  What I can stand being hidden in my shadow is what I have been tolerating in my Self when the sun was at the top of my head and my Self and shadow were at one. When the sun rises we see our silhouette cast out to propose a possible future path; when it goes down we see on the ground dark matter we left behind.  Mid-day is when living is happening, the present Presence comes out to play in reckless abandon.  Life is fragile but for a brief moment there's no shadow on the ground to remind us of that, to curb our enthusiasm. What Hans Küng was getting at, I think, is the idea of "to live on" as if the shadow is the Self.  Imagine th...

Dear Eugene, Paper and pen, I suppose I know how they work.  I wrote a note and put it in the fridge, to indicate to my daughter which lunch is hers.  The lunch is fresh and well preserved, but my idea of paper and pen, notes and words might not be. As compared to when?  When I first knew them. The power of doodling, a child knows that.  Pen goes around in circle, never ending: nothing on paper makes sense; everything is made sense on the paper.  Like the secret of oneself is somewhere hidden in the layers of overlapping circles.  Parents often claim their four-year-old can paint a Pollock .  Well, maybe they did. Maybe we did. Maybe there was a time when we were free to give away a part of us without fear and shame and couldn't see why the Other , the receiver of, the witness to our giving would refuse our gift or take it to mean something else. It's childish, of course, to expect that, we then grow to understand. To believe there is ...

Dear Eugene, "Well, the morning speaks for itself..." The conclusion that concludes nothing came to me first thing in the morning, and now I am working  backward to trace my steps in dream(s). (Last night in my dream I was surprised/confused by a restaurant owner who laid big platters of free food on my table, so many that finally other paying clients would come to take a share.  Then the restaurant had a power outage.  Then it turned into a story about jealousy.  Someone please get me Daniel.) The true meaning of the statement is: My morning speaks about my life . I woke up with sore limbs.  Hours of lawn work last evening.  " I ache in the places where I used to play.. ."   Every time Cohen got to this line in a concert, the audience would find fulfillment in turning their anticipatory smutty smirks to a collective bawdy roar, angels shot down to meet us at our place, desecration that points us to the sacred, classic Cohen modus ope...

Dear Eugene, I read somewhere in the news now that Meghan Markle has the hoopla of the royal wedding behind her she can finally focus on doing feminism again.  I take that to mean she can now devote herself to saving women from men, from the ways of the world, or frankly just from themselves. I don't know her and even less about feminism.  If I do there should be an exponential reduction in my cynicism in relation to my knowing. One thing I do know though: If there really is something called feminism, whoever that is a real fighter for it is a nameless face that we shall never find on the front page, a face that is most likely haggard and ugly, one that no respectable cause would want to enlist as its advocate cover girl and neither would she allow a simple -ism  to circumscribe her call, her vocation, her very life. To say my life is now settled into a certain favorable, congenial pattern conducive to my activism is to say I am a lost cause to all causes alrea...

Dear Eugene, I walked with Sumi just now, going our usual route.  Around my neighborhood. Door after door, my neighbors behind them.  I know many faces, but I hardly know anyone.  One can get used to the remoteness, the indifference, and forget it is a disease. One time I was talking to a lady--she said she is old but I think she can take me down in the ring--and she had her finger going down each door from where she stood, going, "Well, she's dead ...and there used to be a couple but the man's gone; I dunno about the lady, haven't heard from her...and the next door, well she's dead ...and next to her, well, dead too..." She's among the first generation moving into this neighborhood. Yesterday talking to a friend I recalled what Arthur Eddington once said, "We often think that when we have completed our study on one, we know all about two, because two is one and one . We forget that we have still to make a study of and ." It is a...

Dear Eugene, I find artificial turf a very disturbing idea, one of the more unsightly anti-creation project of man.  (Wow, where does that rancor come from on a pleasant Friday morning such as now?) I don't mean a ball field.  I can see the function (though still have great reservation about the rude juxtaposition of human's spirited playing upon a blanket nonchalant to the baptism in blood sweat and tears.) I am talking about artificial turf for a home, what a person does to her "home turf." It is one thing to make things neat.  There is nothing more pleasant to my sight than the uniformity displayed on freshly mowed lawn, especially mine.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and my eyes were opened by sparkling fairies (with beautiful names like Endorphins, Adrenaline, Dopamine and Serotonin--bless the poets) descending, honoring me for my good hard work. Still, uniformity is not forced conformity. I am aware of--have nightmare of damaging my lawn ...

Dear Eugene, These past two weekends have to be among the most meaningful, beautiful in recent memory. The week before we've made new friends who are like long-lost family, reunited in the Adamic wilderness where we've first lost sight of one another, only to be able to make out the others' face once again when we are finally found in Christ. This past weekend my family was busy serving at church to kick off a new season of ministry.  The cry for God, for the Good News in this Bad News World is overwhelming.   Thank you for making us see , we prayed, but this is really too much!  Please help us do your will...like, Big Time Help! Yet despite all the beauty and blessing, joyful toil and exuberant hope, before yesterday was soon over I've lost my temper with...you guessed it, my son.  Again. And it was over absolutely nothing.  Really, no false modesty here; one shouldn't waste even a Meh on it.  Of course I can say this now.  But when it was h...

Dear Eugene, Today is Canada Day, a very special one.  When the next very special Canada Day comes I shall be no more. Today every Canadian wants to find his/her own little story in the big story of Canada, claiming that our own little piece can only find its true meaning within the big picture that goes way before us and shall hopefully continue to unveil after us. There is talk of injustice and reconciliation, steps we must trace back to find today's footing, to find a way forward--to find a way out. But are we just chanting idealistic slogans? We are told that we need to find ourselves, and that's the meaning of life, the grand narrative to make sense of it all.  I love literature and so do you.  We know how the idea of how there really is only one story to tell and that is a person's search for himself seems so naturally valid that we don't even know we have picked our assumption but there could be more than one. What other assumption could there be? ...