Deep Learning across from my Jr. High School.  written in 2008.​

I celebrate every day. This is the Buddha in me. Writing is a celebration and a devotion. Not to the writer but to the Buddha within us writers. What’s not to like? ​

A writer must write, it’s a practice. Thinking about writing just doesn’t make it. It is a step but I have to carry my writable ideas carefully and quickly to my little old machine before they spill, leaving only traces for a while.​

I can write about where I write, what else? I observe stuff here everyday. Of course it’s the people here that are the most memorable and their things reflect them. This writer likes a small machine to record his work. I know this old machine well enough that I don’t fight it at all. The pen works well also. My machine makes it much easier now that were old friends. ​

I can enjoy this work in various places, old friends. A neighborhood pub or a corner in my place, work well. Here time can stand still and expand out into the universe. In doing this practice here, I find the things I really want to say. True, I must practice but the rewards are more than can be explained. ​

Let me explain. The window I’m next to has one of the curled brown leafs caught in a strand of web, just a little above eye level, it dances in an Autumn wind. I have a table my legs fit under and supports my machine. Feeling this way and with some rest what I want to say can come out and be satisfying for I have total recall of all the weird places I have ever been. This variety can only be called a treasure. ​

In 1968, I wrote like this in our bedroom at Lynny Stienberg’s apartment which backed up to the El tracks behind and looked over the playground of my old Jr. High School in front. Her place was right above the penny candy store that I used break school rules to attend almost daily. Just the thrill of crossing that illegal street and the sweet reward was a good thing to absorb in that educational institution. ​

Lynny hadn’t even gone to my high school. We met hanging out and had been friends. It was cool and nice to have friends from another high school. We clicked a  little in those days and one afternoon we made out heavily, Lynny on the washing machine in her parents basement, me standing before her at just the right height in my devotion. ​

I tasted such great maturity that summer, living with Lynny. We had this talk before I moved in; we weren’t in love, we would share the apartment without strings. Besides all this wonderful theory, I knew Lynny had become much more desirable than before. We really liked each other. She and I actually had an unspoken pact to show each other how mature we had become. We were married to the concept and we made it work always, sharing our hectic at work stories, discussing the management of the apartment and making fantastic love in bed. Outside of that, there was very little time for anything. ​

We were reflective. She looked at me from the bed and reflected me. She could just sort of pause in a build up and look at me and ask something like, “Are you happy?” She was a rational human being, it was not a frivolous question at all, she had a seriously inquisitive nature. She seemed to consider and appreciate my answer without losing our passion. Her intelligence in the heat of the moment would bond us, more than I would ever realize and more than we wanted to talk about and thereby lose. To this day, I believe when I was happy she was happy. I wrote poetry, free and with this type of devotion to her. I suspected that in me there was deep understanding of how amazingly lucky this all was. ​

We did not keep an argument alive and never fought. I believe we were both so appreciative, that it was truly unbelievable. Sometimes when we were together her eyes would really actually sparkle.​

Our ‘thing’ was born of the fact that it would, it could end and we both felt this sadness.. unspoken. It seemed only to make what we had together better. I think this irony of not being ‘attached’ and such deep bonding was a vision of death that ‘made’ life so amazing. Now, I think this is the Buddhist view of, understanding death in order to understand life. This thing never dies. Now I understand.​

There is that golden time of life in learning where I never think of anything other than what we were learning, no assumptions, always an appreciation, a surprise. This is mystic, like the rising sun or water running when you turn on a tap. How do we learn? I’ve studied it so much, to be a teacher and it is mystic, it is a determination that is not set back. ​

This amazement is always what makes me want to write it all at one sitting, the death concept that lets me take a break and resume with confidence. What there is to spill, will be spilled and I’m spilling it all!​

--------------------------​