The Boiling Frog

On of my favorite sections out of The Story of B.

Connecting the Dots

A few years back I posted this quote about mining and war by Lewis Mumford:

"From the earliest times, as Mircea Eliade points out, blood sacrifice had been a ritual accompaniment of metallurgy. The curse of war and the curse of mining are almost interchangeable: united in death."

Yesterday, on the mail route, I thought of this quote and realized that Martin Prechtel might have some answers in how to lift that curse:

So, just to get the iron, the shaman has to pay for the ore, the fire, the wind, and so on — not in dollars and cents, but in ritual activity equal to what’s been given. Then that iron must be made into steel, and the steel has to be hammered into the shape of a knife, sharpened, and tempered, and a handle must be put on it. There is a deity to be fed for each part of the procedure. When the knife is finished, it is called the “tooth of earth.” It will cut wood, meat, and plants. But if the necessary sacrifices have been ignored in the name of rationalism, literalism, and human superiority, it will cut humans instead.

All of those ritual gifts make the knife enormously “expensive,” and make the process quite involved and time-consuming. The need for ritual makes some things too spiritually expensive to bother with. That’s why the Mayans didn’t invent space shuttles or shopping malls or backhoes. They live as they do not because it’s a romantic way to live — it’s not; it’s enormously hard — but because it works.--Martin Prechtel

A.E's Aphorism

Reading through some old notebooks that are full of quotes and notes from books I've read in the past. Wrote this down back February of 2010: "A man becomes the image of the thing he hates."--A.E's aphorism, Pg. 361, The Myth of the Machine Vol.ll

Chilling.

The Fence

I often think of this image when I'm fixing fences around our place.

New Dialogue at The Ishmael Community

A new dialogue over at The Ishmael Community exploring whether or not humans have stopped evolving.

"We're definitely living in a way that's going to put an end to creation. If we go on, there will be no successor to man, no successor to chimpanzees, no successor to orangutans, no successor to gorillas—no successor to anything alive now. The whole thing is going to come to an end with us. In order to make their story come true, the Takers have to put an end to creation itself—and they're doing a damned good job of it.”--Daniel Quinn

Saturday's DQ Quote

"It has been the work of my life to pin down and demolish the lie that is at the root of this mythology in our culture. It's to be found in the way we tell the human story itself in our culture. You can see it perpetuated in textbook after textbook, and if you keep your eyes open, you'll see it repeated weekly somewhere---in a newspaper or magazine article, in a television documentary. Here it is, the human story as it's told in our culture, day in and day out, stripped to its essentials. "Humans appeared in the living community about three million years ago. When they appeared, they were foragers, just like their primate ancestors. Over the millennia, these foragers added hunting to their repertoire and so became hunter-gatherers. Humans lived as hunter-gatherers until about ten thousand years ago, when they abandoned this life for the agricultural life, settling down into villages and beginning to build the civilization that encircles the world today." That's the story as our children learn it, and it has just this one little problem, that it didn't happen that way at all. Ten thousand years ago, it was not HUMANITY that traded in the foraging life for the agricultural life and began to build civilization, it was a single culture. One culture out of ten thousand cultures did this, and the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine went on exactly as before. Over the millennia that followed, this one culture, born in the middle east, overran neighboring cultures in all directions, finally arriving in the New World about five hundred years ago. At which point it began to overrun the native cultures of THIS part of the world as well. It is a truism that the conqueror gets to write the history books, and the history our children learn is history as WE tell it. And the central lie of this history is that HUMANITY ITSELF did what WE did."--Daniel Quinn from the essay titled: The Little Engine That Couldn't: How We're Preparing Ourselves and Our Children for Extinction

Baseball Novels

Stayed up late last night and finished Calico Joe, by John Grisham. I highly recommend it to baseball fans, fathers and sons, or anyone just looking for a good book to read. Next one on this list is Chris Ballard's One Shot at Forever. Ever since reading his article in Sports Illustrated over a year ago I've been waiting for his book to come out. I've wanted to get a better idea of how Lynn Sweet coached his team. I often think of him and the Macon Ironmen when I'm around the diamonds.

Helping or Not?

Last year I read this article in Sports Illustrated about Yogi Berra. This quote has stuck in my mind since reading it. In my role as Little League baseball coach I always wonder if I'm really helping the kids out.

While walking through the museum, Berra did not even seem to notice the picture. He was talking about how he loves Little League baseball but wishes kids would organize more of their own games. When his own sons were young and they asked him to play catch, he would say, "Go ask your brothers." Adults, he thinks, should stay out of the way when it comes to baseball.--Yogi Berra

Death Urge and Sexual Fantasy

Years ago Derrick Jensen made it clear to me in his monumental book A Language Older Than Words that we have a death urge. What I'm understanding that to be is an urge to destroy life on this planet. Otherwise we wouldn't be driving a couple hundred species extinct a day by our actions.

This morning I was paging through my notes that I've written down from books I've read in the past and I ran across this:

"The majority of sexual fantasy and desire points to the erotic dynamic in life and not to actual sex."--Thomas Moore, Pg. 176, The Soul of Sex

Perhaps the less pleasurable and erotic our day to day lives become the more the porn industry grows. I don't know, it's just a thought. I like entertaining ideas.

Baseball is Homeric

As the Little League baseball season continues I'm falling deeper into it. Even though I tell myself every year I'm not going to let it happen it does anyway. I don't know why I just don't accept it. Everything about the game sucks me in.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before but as a kid I used to think I could die on the baseball diamond and I wouldn't mind.

I'm going back through my notebooks and reading quotes I've written down from baseball books I've read. This quote by Chad Harbach in The Art of Fielding lays out nicely one of the reasons why I love the game so much.

"But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric--not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football. You stood and waited and tried to still you mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see?"--Pg.259, The Art of Fielding

Tomatoes Are In

Yesterday marked the day that our tomatoes were officially planted. Annie planted them while I entertained our 2 year old. Basically that amounted to him following me around the place with his batting helmet smashed over his baseball cap on top of his head with only a T-shirt on his back. I did a few things that needed to be done while he added commentary and asked "why?" a hundred or more times. He definately has a way of putting things into perspective for me. Appearance or time definately doesn't concern him much.

I also finally put up the rain gauge that my parents bought for me 5 years ago. Checked it after the thunderstorm and it read close to a quarter inch of rain and bird crap. It sorta looked like a milkshake. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's found the gauge useful. Hopefully, they don't make a habit out of this

A Bit Wiser, Atleast I Thought

I'm still working my through All of the Above. The other day at the dinner table I attempted to explain to my family how Dwight Eisenhower was the first president in our nation's history to have to deal with aliens. And, of course, how the aliens didn't like Kennedy so they had to got rid of him.

Their response to my newly gained insights was: You can't believe everything you read in a book!

Quinn Quote Saturday

In fact, the real gods of the world--if there are any--are competent gods. They created a world that functions perfectly, without divine oversight or intervention. If we don't curb our population growth, the built-in processes of the world will take care of it. If we continue to attack them as vigorously as we are right now, the ecological systems that keep us alive will eventually collapse, leaving a world that won't sustain human life at all. We'll be gone--probably along with most or all large life forms of animal life--but life will go on and start rebuilding anew, just as it's done after every mass extinction of the past."-- Daniel Quinn, Pg. 61, If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways

Feeling Fortunate

The other day Ran Prieur posted this excerpt from an interview that Oprah did with author Cormac McCarthy. It resonated with me and I've thought about since.

Oprah: Are you just not interested in material [things]?

Cormac McCarthy: I'm really not. I mean, it's not that I don't like things. Some things are really nice, but they certainly take a distant second place to being able to live your life and do what you want to do. And I always knew that I didn't want to work.

Oprah: How did you manage that? Most people want to know how to do that.

McCarthy: Well, you have to be dedicated. But it was my Number One priority.

Oprah: That you didn't want to have a nine-to-five job?

McCarthy: Yeah. I thought, 'You're just here once, life is brief, and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.' And I don't have any advice for anybody on how to go about that, except that if you're really dedicated you can probably do it.

Oprah: So you worked at not working.

McCarthy: Absolutely. Yeah, it was the Number One priority.

There isn't a day that goes by where I don't feel fortunate that I don't have to go to a 9 to 5 job. One of my biggest fears is to be systematically coerced back into doing it again. And I work hard at not having to do it again. I also have never really been interested in material things. Eric Hoffer was right when he said it takes leisure to mature.

Looking into the Future

Yesterday the day got away from me, so I forgot to post. This was all I had in mind to post yesterday.

"When people look into the future and give up hope, it's because they don't know
what to DO about the bad things they see."--Daniel Quinn, from his essay on Hope

Keep on Sittin

I have sitting in front of me Phil Jackson's Sacred Hoops. I remember saying to myself when I first read the book that it would be nice to have a copy. Well, yesterday, while my son (2 1/2 yrs. old) and I were at the laundry mat doing laundry for a families' vacation home we clean for cash, I noticed across the street there was a thrift store. So, of course, I wondered if they had any books. It seems like whenever I have some free time I usually turn to books. Anyway, we walked over and checked it out. I found a couple shelves of books. And, as I was browsing the the shelves, I found Sacred Hoops. A few minutes later I took it up to the counter and paid fifty cents for it. It was suppose to be a buck, but there was no price tag on it. I donated the other fifty cents to the thrift shop.

We lost our game yesterday. We got ten run ruled. What this means is that if a team is losing by ten runs or more after four innings they call the game. I've also heard it referred to as the mercy rule.

Before our game, I opened up my copy of Sacred Hoops to any page and started reading. Here is what I came across:

"Little by little, with regular practice, you start to discriminate raw sensory events from your reactions to them. Eventually, you begin to experience a point of stillness within. As the stillness becomes more stable, you tend to identify less with fleeing thoughts and feelings, such as fear, anger or pain, and experience a state of inner harmony, regardless of changing circumstances. For me, meditation is a tool that allows me to stay calm and centered (well, most of the time) during the stressful highs and lows of basketball and life outside the arena. During games I often get agitated by bad calls, but years of meditation practice have taught me how to find that still point within so that I can argue passionately with the refs without being overwhelmed by anger."[Pg. 119, Sacred Hoops]

I think I understand the anger he's talking about. When things aren't going well in our games (Which is a good majority of the time) it's tough not to get down on players, umpires, and mostly myself.

I continue to sit zazen every morning.

Rescued a Book

I ran across the lines below in a book that was borrowed to us a few years back. I finally got around to rescuing the book out of the old house (This is the house that was on our property when we bought it. We lived in it without running water for close to five years.).

"If we are not aware of the effects of time pressures on the family, we run the risk of living lives of continual acceleration, non-stop doing, and passing that on to our children."--Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn

I'm aware of "time pressures on the family." And the pressures don't go away, especially this time of year. And, of course, coaching Little League baseball increases it.

I usually catch myself thinking there has to be more indicators that things are going to slow down from the culture at large for the time pressures to atleast fade a bit. No amount of attention or awareness will stop it. We'll see. Right now, I'm out of time. The family is waking up.

Simple Saying

This simple saying caught my attention this beautiful Sunday morning:

Don't draw another's bow;
don't ride another's horse;
don't discuss another's faults;
don't explore anothers affairs.--Wu-Men, Thirteenth-Century Chinese Zen Master

Quinn Quote Saturday: Utopia

"What do you call a system that will only work if the people in it are better than people have ever been? ... What do you call a system that's built on the presumption that people in this system will be better than people have ever been before? Everyone in this system is going to be kind and generous and considerate and selfless and obedient and compassionate and peaceable. What kind of system is that?"

"Utopian?"

"Utopian is right, Julie. Every one of your systems is a utopian system. Democracy would be heaven-- if people would just be better than people have ever been. Of course, Soviet communism was supposed to have been heaven too ... Your justice system would work perfectly if people would just be better than people have ever been. And of course your schools would work perfectly under the same conditions."--Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael

The Time Before Death

Feeling the need to read some poems before the family wakes up. I randomly cracked open Robert Bly and Marion Woodman's The Maiden King and found this one immediately:

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten--
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of
Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will
have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is. Believe in
the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for, it is the
intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.--Kabir

For some odd reason this line really resonated with me: "What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death."

Entertaining Ideas

I just want to say that I stand with anyone working toward recalling Governor Scott Walker. Right now, I'm entertaining this idea. And, as some of us know the mind loves to entertain ideas. Anyway, I'm a wage slave that is trying to survive in Western Civilization. In other words, I'm an exploitable resource. And if the exploiters could find a way to pay me less for my work, or ship my job off to another place where people are willing to work for less, they'd do it in a heartbeat.

I think Lewis Mumford was onto something when he said this about Karl Marx: "He realized that the French revolution had divided society artificially into two spheres, the political, in which man functioned as a tolerant, liberal, egalitarian citizen, and the economic, in which he was either a grasping capitalist or an exploited worker." [Pg. 203, Interpretations and Forecasts.]

I'm an exploited worker that is becoming more and more intolerant of grasping capitalists therefore as a "tolerant, liberal, egalitarian citizen" I'm going to fight the grasping capitalists.

I love to entertain ideas

Thank You for Fungo Bats and Sugar Maples

I've been wanting a fungo bat (What coaches use to hit groundballs and flyballs to their team) for a couple of years now. I've held off on buying one, though. I just couldn't justify spending the money. Yesterday as we were pulling into Antigo just after sunrise my Dad mentioned that there is a lumber mill in Antigo that makes bats for Brewer's sluggers Ryan Braun and Cory Hart. He said there is a special characteristic to the sugar maples in that part of the state that produces a good bat. I thought it was interesting, but didn't think about it much after that.

Well, it was getting close to dinner time and we were looking at the house my Dad was born and raised in. There wasn't much else we wanted to do, so we were getting ready to head back home. But just than we'd noticed just two blocks down from his old house was the mill where the slugger's bats are made. So we decided to stop in at the office and see if they actually sold the bats right there. The secretary confirmned they did and went it got someone from that part of the mill that could show me the bats.

Twenty minutes and One Hundred and Twenty Dollars later I walked out of their with two fungo RockBats, one 33" and the other 35." I don't really regret buying them. With my families' interest in baseball I think I'll be hitting fungos for quite some time. One thing I will say, though, is that I don't like to see sugar maples cut. I never liked cutting them when I was a logger and I hate seeing others cut them now. I'd rather see the trees being tapped for maple syrup than being killed for lumber. So thank you to the sugar maple trees who gave up their lives to make my fungo bats.

They'll be put to good use.

What Holds The Wheel Together

Off to Antigo, Wisconsin today. My dad and I are making the trip east to visit the gravesites of my grandparents and meet up with my aunt.

We had our second Little League game last night and won. I'm proud of the kids. In the three years that I've been their coach this is probably some of the best baseball I've seen them play.

I still feel like I could be a much better coach though. Part of the problem is that I don't think I understand 9-12 year olds well enough yet. I'm turning to the notebooks for more inspiration.

I often think of this zen teaching that Phil Jackson had in Sacred Hoops: "See beyond what is seen. Never forget that a wheel is made not only of spokes but also of the space between the spokes. Sturdy spokes poorly placed make a weak wheel. Whether their full potential is realized depends on the harmony between. The essence of wheelmaking lies in the craftsman's ability to conceive and create the space that holds and balances the spokes within the wheel. Think now, who is the craftsman here?" [Pg. 150, Sacred Hoops]

A Full Day Ahead

Off to carry mail for the United States Postal service again today. Coaching in our second Little League baseball game afterwards. Hopefully our team does better this time around. Talking about baseball that reminds me: another reason why I sit zazen is because, I think, it helps me concentrate on the game better.

Looking forward to voting in the Wisconsin primary tomorrow. Just think, by this time next month Wisconsin could have a new governor.

Yesterday, a friend posted this excerpt out of Daniel Quinn's Providence:

"Kindler and rekindler of universes, the fire burns forever. It is the flame of life that courses through all generations from first to last, that burns without consuming, that is itself consumed and renewed inexhaustibly, life after life, generation after generation, species after species, galaxy after galaxy, universe after universe, each sharing in the blaze for its season and going down to death while the fire burns on undiminished. The fire is life itself, the life of this universe, of this galaxy, of this planet, of this place and every place: the place by the rock and the place under the hill and the place by the river and the place in the forest, no two alike anywhere. And the life of every place is god, who is the fire: the life of the pond, god; the life of the tundra, god; the life of the sea, god; the life of the land, god; the life of the earth, god; the life of the universe, god: in every place unique, as the life of every place is unique, and in every place burns the same, as the fire that burns is everywhere the fire of life." - Written by Daniel Quinn about 30 years ago, but not published until it appeared in 1994 at the end of his semi-autobiography Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest.

Soul and Spirit

Lately I've been rereading my journals from the past of years. I ran across this entry on June 6th, 2011:

The Wild Man isn't like an Eastern Mystic: "When it comes time for a young male to talk with the Wild Man he will find the conversation quite distinct from a talk with a minister, a rabbi, or a guru. Conversing with the Wild Man is not talking about bliss or mind or spirit, or 'higher consciousness,' but about something wet, dark, and low--what James Hillman would call 'soul'." [Robert Bly, Iron John]

I've mentioned a couple of times that I sit zazen(meditate)for a half-n-hour every morning. There are times when I wonder why I'm doing it. Robert Bly once said this about enlightenment and the soul: "Mythology is more helpful than enlightenment or to put it chronologically, years of mythology need to come, accustoming the soul to darkness, before the soul is ready for enlightenment."

Part of the reason I do it is to relax and slow my thoughts. But than this excerpt from an interview with psychologist James Hillman comes to mind:

Safransky: What if the goal is merely a few minutes of calm?

Hillman: If that’s the goal, what’s the difference between meditation and having a nice drink? Or going to the hairdresser and sitting for an hour and flipping through a magazine? Or writing a long letter, a love letter? Do you realize what we’re not doing in this culture? Having an evening’s conversation with people; that can be so relaxing. Moving one’s images, moving one’s soul; I think we’ve locked on to meditation as the main method for settling down.

It’s better to go into the world half-cocked than not to go into the world at all. I know when something’s wrong. And I can say, “This is outrageous. This is insulting. This is a violation. And it’s wrong.” I don’t know what we should do about it; my protest is absolutely empty. But I believe in that empty protest.

You see, one of the ways you get trapped into not going into the world is when people — usually in positions of power — say, “Oh, yeah, wise guy, what would you do about it? What would you do about the Persian Gulf crisis?” I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t know. But I know when I feel something is wrong, and I trust that sense of outrage, that sense of insult. And so, empty protest is a valid way of expressing feeling, politically. Remember, that’s where we began: how do you connect feeling with politics? Well, one of the ways is through that empty protest. You don’t know what’s right, but you know what’s wrong.

Quinn Quote Saturday

"We make our journey in the company of others; the deer, the rabbit, the bison, and the quail walk before us, and the lion, the eagle, the wolf, the vulture, and the hyena walk behind us. All our paths lie together in the hand of god and none is wider than any other or favored above any other. The worm that creeps beneath your foot is making its journey across the hand of god as surely as you are.

"Wherever life moves, the hand of god is under it, so no step can be off the path. When you stumble on the mountainside, that is part of your path. When your child is sick and you turn aside from the hunt, that is part of your path. When you wander hungry in the desert and cannot find your way, you're not lost, you're on your path. When cunning fails and your prey eludes you, don't curse your luck; this fruitless hunt is part of your path."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.74, The Tales of Adam

Busy Day

Annie and I are off to work to carry mail for United States Postal Service today. Not much time to write. Getting kids ready to go over to their grandparents while we work. We're lucky in that regard, both sets of grandparents only live about 4 miles from the house.

Baseball practice scheduled for tonight. It's going to be a busy day. I often have to remind myself that most families have to do this everyday.

First Game of the Season

We had our first Little Leageue baseball game last night. We ended up losing 18 to 2. I was nervous as hell the whole day leading up to it, but the weird thing is that I was extremely calm during the game as my team of 9-12 yr. olds self-destructed. I remember experiencing the exact same thing playing baseball as a child. So after 25 years not much has changed. The same sort of thoughts and feelings (I wrote about some of them yesterday) happen leading up to the game, but during the game they fade or simply just go away. Upon reflection I think part of the reason this happens is explained in this quote by Phil Jackson:

"[Players] live for the moments when they can lose themselves completely in the action and experience the pure joy of competition."--Phil Jackson, Pg. 180, Sacred Hoops

Right now I'd say that it happens not only to players but coaches too.

Getting Ahead of Myself

Right now I feel rushed, anxious, and overwhelmed. And I've noticed some minor Obsessive Compulsive symptoms happening like pacing and thinking the same thought over and over. I feel like if I just focus and try harder that this feeling will go away (This a big part of the reason I sit Zazen every morning). It's nothing new, I've felt it on and off probably since the beginning of adolesence. In the past I've blamed our culture, school, my parents and so on about this. All of them, of course, play a factor. Anyway, it comes and goes. I've learned how to deal with it and have adjusted my lifestyle accordingly. As a child this was tough to deal with though. I had no idea what the hell was going on.

This all, of course, ties into Daniel Quinn's work. Ever since running across the sentence below it felt like there was a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. Someone had finally recognized my suffering and showed that others were going through the same thing. It also meant that I wasn't a defective product but the system that I was trying to conform to is.

"It's estimated that, since the days of my youth, depression among children has increased by 1000% and teen suicide by 300%."--Daniel Quinn, Pg. 180, Beyond Civilization

Looking back on my childhood it was pretty pathetic I understood what depression and anxiety were well before I was 12 years old. And from my perspective 25 years later I simply should not have been thinking about that at that age.

Turning to the Notebooks

Yesterday I had a bad day coaching Little League baseball practice. It felt like the team and myself were out of whack. Twenty-four hours later I'm still feeling the effects of this. I've taken the responsibilty of this onto my shoulders because I am the head coach, the team's leader. So I'm turning to my notebooks for some help and inspiration. I wrote this down when I read Phil Jackson's Sacred Hoops back in October of 2010.

"This ancient Zen teaching holds great wisdom for anyone envisioning how to get the most out of a group. Just as fish don't fly and elephants don't play rock and roll, you can't expect a team to perform in a way that's out of tune with it's basic abilities. Though the eagle may soar and fly close to the heavens, it's view of the earth is broad and unclouded. In other words, you can dream all you want, but, bottom line, you've got to work with what you've got. Otherwise, you're wasting your time. The team won't buy your plan and everyone--most of all you--will end up frustrated and disappointed. But when your vision is based on clear-sighted, realistic assessment of your resources, alchemy of the ten mysteriously occurs and a team transforms into a force greater than the sum of its individual talents. Inevitably, pardadoxically, the acceptance of boundaries and limits is the gateway to freedom.

"But visions are never the sole property of one man or one woman. Before a vision can become reality, it must owned by every single member of the group."--Phil Jackson, Pg. 100, Sacred Hoops

I think I have somewhat of a better understanding where my occasional frustration and dissapointment come from. And I'll be learning more about the alchemy of the ten.