Sitting in Cafe Ventana
Chinese poets
the state of the world
Your life is your religion
Who said that?
The Dalai Lama?
No, my mother

In a restaurant

I hear a mother going over grades

With her daughter

A high schooler

wearing a black fedora

trimmed with a multi-colored band above the rim,

Wire rimmed glasses perched on her nose

And a stuffed animal necklace around her neck.

One ear bud in her ear.

Questions about points and averages

She needs to get that A

She nods and only begins to speak

But the conversation is so fast

No one is listening

It changes

She turns and gets lost in her phone

Moving away from a conversation

She was never having.

At another table

A man tells his eight year old daughter

That she has to set up at the table

He is lost in his paper and

She is laying on the bench

Did he notice her because

She has kicked him

With her foot

She gets up and walks away

Then returns to grab his phone

Trying so hard to engage

A father who is so far away from her 

But right next to her.

Not together

But at a distance

Far apart

What a wonderful day

It would be

If they could laugh together. 

Dipa Ma taught that the mind is all stories, one after another like nesting dolls.  You open one, and another is inside.  Open that one, and there is another story emerging.  When you get to the last nesting doll, the smallest one, and open it, inside of it is – what? It’s empty, nothing there and all around you are the empty shells of the stories of your life. 

Because Dipa Ma was able literally to see through the stories of the mind, she did not acknowledge personal dramas of any kind.  She wanted her students to live from a deeper truth than their interpretations of, and identification with, the external events of their lives.  Dipa Ma knew all about life’s dramas.  She had personally suffered chronic illness; grief at the deaths of her parents, husband, and two children; and crushing despair.  Only when she had gone beyond identification with the stories and dramas in her life did she begin to live as a free person. 

From:  Dipa Ma The Life and Legacy of a Buddist Master by Amy Schmidt.  

It's raining.
I'm going 
out
to
dance.
I am already
wrinkled.
I can get
as
wet
as
I want!

For Lily

Before you left
I snuck a tiny book
into your purse,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
So you would
read
and know
that your life
is a
poem
too!

August 2014

When I Read

By Chris Wallach

Why it is that when I read a book

I feel like I have to become a

character in that book.

Like right now

I want to talk with a southern accent

and feign a capricious air

about all that is passing me by.

This beautiful spring day,

little leaves emerging on the

bud ends,

flower ovaries growing

into the beginnings of the fruit

they will become,

sweet to taste when they

become fully ripe.

Like this should be a metaphor

for my ripening.

Am I developing

into something that will be

sweet on the tongue,

words in someone’s mouth

about my possibilities

or my loveliness.

Perhaps,

when I am the main character

in the book I am writing.

That will be glorious

Sitting inside of Starbucks (With Interbeing Views Again) by Chris Wallach

December 10, 2014 at 9:14pm

hearing Bob Dylan
I want you
sitting in Starbucks
could be like the 
living room of
extended family
uncomfortable
in each other’s presence
I want you
some reading
some keyboarding
some talking
some connected
some disconnected
I want you so bad
none aware of
the wholeness
that we are
each in a bubble
Honey, I want you