From NOEBIE.net
I thought I should pin some links to the top here for people who arrive at this site from my Instagram.
Our community Kirtan site is here: Key City Kirtan
My site about spiritual practices is here: Shyamatara Das
Here is the Tarot site: Cards of Light
You can find additional links up in the main navigation.
Thanks!
My wife had given me Just Kids by Patti Smith as a present quite some time ago, and I had not gotten around to reading it until now. Smith’s 75th birthday on December 30th prompted me to pull it off the shelves. Once I started reading I could barely put it down.
This book was written as a tribute to her first great love, Robert Mapplethorpe. All I had known before of Mapplethorpe was the controversy surrounding NEA funding of a retrospective of his work titled The Perfect Moment that was exhibited shortly after his death (from complications of HIV/AIDS) in 1989. I’m thankful to know more about about this unique and gifted creative spirit, who was instrumental in lifting photography to the status of fine art that it only attained during his lifetime.
Over the course of 200 and some pages, we learn about Smith’s own early life, and her journey from Suburban New Jersey to the center of the mid-1970s Proto-Punk scene at CBGB and beyond. We also learn about Mapplethorpe’s youth, and gain some insight into the sexual and artistic sensibilities that informed his career. Just Kids is so much more than simple biography, though. It unveils the complexities of love and art – and lives that are devoted to love and art.
Poetic, inspirational, joyful, sad, informative, direct and starkly honest, this book was a delight, throughout even the darkest moments of its story. Like much of our greatest literature, it offers glimpses into the universal mystery of the human condition by presenting a deeply personal account of a particular life and time.
The edition I have (with the cover pictured above) is a beautifully bound paperback, with lovely leaves, sig configuration and design. Just Kids is most highly recommended, especially to those who are pursuing a creative life, those who value literature, art, photography, poetry or Rock’n’Roll, and those who dream of friendship and love that endures a lifetime.
I hate to break it to you
But you probably ought to know
Death runs in our family
It’s what got my mom
and my dad
And all of my grandparents, too
Even Grandpa’s second wife
It’s actually a little unsettling
That so many
in our family
Have succumbed to this
It doesn’t seem to matter
How much exercise we get
Or our diets
Or whether or not we’re wealthy
Death just seems
to run in our family
I went live on Facebook to jabber about what we did over the Summer of 2021, and also to talk just a bit about Mantra Practice.
An old man with a ukulele sings Don Henley’s Boys of Summer.
Our friend, Dan, drove me to town for the meeting that night. We stopped to see you before it started. Your sister was there, and a friend of yours who was back home for a visit. He was clearly up to no good. He had his eyes on you.
The ceilings were high. Everything was pristine, silver, black and white. We all stood. No one was seated. Your husband wasn’t home.
You and I went to the southeast corner of the kitchen to talk. We embrace. I place my hands on the sides of your head and draw you to me like a cup. Your eyes are soft and dark and intent. Fire.
We kiss, and your pucker pulls my teeth to yours. You lock me there, teeth to teeth, vacuum and pressure. Stillness. Brainwaves drop into theta. I am falling. I am in samadhi.
Your eyes. Your eyes. Your eyes. Wherever I go in the room I glance and your eyes.
I become aware of the other people in the room. Dan has left, and I realize I have no ride home. I look for a cigarette. I find a tin box with little leftover pieces of cigarettes and they look like the Luckies that my dad smoked. I light one, and take a draw. It tastes of harsh menthol, like a Kool. Nasty. Sick. Regret.
We are in the hallways at a conference. It is morning. I avoid small talk with the others. I find a buffet station. Tiny metal strips with little circles in them – like flattened kazoos – seem like vessels for heating water for coffee.
Wait. That can’t be right.
We added a Tanpura/Swarmandal to our collection of instruments last week, so I’ve been spending a great deal of time getting it under hand, and using it in my daily meditation practice. It works really well for japa with shorter mantras.
I’m hoping to make it through 108 Gayatri repetitions during this month’s Key City Kirtan gathering.
As we watch the COVID 19 crisis unfold in India, and the horrors being inflicted in Palestine, it can be difficult to maintain equanimity or hope. More than ever, in such times, I find it crucial to focus on whatever we can do – however insignificant it may seem – to offer our help.
Here are some charitable organizations that one might consider.
For Palestine
https://www.zakat.org/get-involved/palestine-siege
https://uhr.givecloud.co/gaza-emergency-campaign
https://irusa.org/middle-east/palestine/
For India
https://www.ketto.org/fundraiser/ManavSadhnaforCovid
https://punarnavacommunity.org/covid-19-relief-support/
https://thedesaifoundation.org/
Please help if you can.
you were as witty
and urbane
as cole porter
and ten times as cynical
i was reading
schopenhauer
last night
zip
i’m a heterosexual
i wish i could have found you
wandering the streets
of the city
drunk
soaked
bewitched, bothered and bewildered
before the pneumonia took hold
and your book ended
Each time I think that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops have gotten to the point where there isn’t much they can do that would surprise me or disappoint me, they find a way to do it.
When obsessions with language and semantics around gender and sexuality causes a group to oppose funding for suicide prevention, prevention of violence against women, and protection for all against discrimination, they have departed from any semblance of being “True to the Gospel” or “pro-life.”
I have to remind myself that the Bishops, although meant to be shepherds of the Church, are not the Church itself. So, it is not accurate to say that “the Catholic Church opposes” equality. Nevertheless, it is troubling to remain in communion with a body which seems to be led by bigots.