On His Baldness

(Adapted from Chinese Translations)

In the morning, I hated to see my hair fall out.
In the evening, I hated to see my hair fall out.
I dreaded the time when it would all be gone.
But now it is, and I don't mind at all.
I am done with all that washing and drying.
I never have to pick up another comb.
I said goodbye to my stylist, forever.
Best of all, when the day is hot and humid
I don't have all that hair sticking to my head.
In a silver jar I have stored a cold stream.
On my bald head, I can sprinkle a cup full.
This is the water of natural law.
I sit and receive this cleansing joy.
Now I know why the monk who seeks enlightenment
First frees his soul by shaving his head.

Bai Juyi (A.D. 832)

The Positive Meaning of Goodness

The conclusion to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (published between 1875-1877). The translation is by Constance Black Garnett and is available online at The Literature Network.

"Well, what is it perplexes me?" Levin said to himself, feeling beforehand that the solution of his difficulties was ready in his soul, though he did not know it yet. "Yes, the one unmistakable, incontestable manifestation of the Divinity is the law of right and wrong, which has come into the world by revelation, and which I feel in myself, and in the recognition of which--I don't make myself, but whether I will or not--I am made one with other men in one body of believers, which is called the church. Well, but the Jews, the Mohammedans, the Confucians, the Buddhists--what of them?" he put to himself the question he had feared to face. "Can these hundreds of millions of men be deprived of that highest blessing without which life has no meaning?" He pondered a moment, but immediately corrected himself. "But what am I questioning?" he said to himself. "I am questioning the relation to Divinity of all the different religions of all mankind. I am questioning the universal manifestation of God to all the world with all those misty blurs. What am I about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge beyond all doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinately trying to express that knowledge in reason and words.

"Don't I know that the stars don't move?" he asked himself, gazing at the bright planet which had shifted its position up to the topmost twig of the birch-tree. "But looking at the movements of the stars, I can't picture to myself the rotation of the earth, and I'm right in saying that the stars move.

"And could the astronomers have understood and calculated anything, if they had taken into account all the complicated and varied motions of the earth? All the marvelous conclusions they have reached about the distances, weights, movements, and deflections of the heavenly bodies are only founded on the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies about a stationary earth, on that very motion I see before me now, which has been so for millions of men during long ages, and was and will be always alike, and can always be trusted. And just as the conclusions of the astronomers would have been vain and uncertain if not founded on observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a single meridian and a single horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and uncertain if not founded on that conception of right, which has been and will be always alike for all men, which has been revealed to me as a Christian, and which can always be trusted in my soul. The question of other religions and their relations to Divinity I have no right to decide, and no possibility of deciding."

"Oh, you haven't gone in then?" he heard Kitty's voice all at once, as she came by the same way to the drawing-room.

"What is it? you're not worried about anything?" she said, looking intently at his face in the starlight.

But she could not have seen his face if a flash of lightning had not hidden the stars and revealed it. In that flash she saw his face distinctly, and seeing him calm and happy, she smiled at him.

"She understands," he thought; "she knows what I'm thinking about. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I'll tell her." But at the moment he was about to speak, she began speaking.

"Kostya! do something for me," she said; "go into the corner room and see if they've made it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch. I can't very well. See if they've put the new wash stand in it."

"Very well, I'll go directly," said Levin, standing up and kissing her.

"No, I'd better not speak of it," he thought, when she had gone in before him. "It is a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words.

"This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith--or not faith--I don't know what it is--but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.

"I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it."

Philadelphia to Columbia, Flight 2340

Above clouds the texture of plowed and abandoned fields
A brilliant surface white and blue, worn and rutted to the horizon
The bleached bones of a great fish resting in a shallow blue sea.

Turning toward the sun, low on the curve of earth in late afternoon
The blues vanish into white light so bright it fills all the space of vision
Obliterates all form and color before descending through suddenly dirty clouds.

Blind as a snowstorm, the rumble of turbulence begins
The lifeless beauty of clouds drawn into engines
A vapor turned into scarred flesh and love that will last
Amid the violent motion that begins all life, transcends all suffering,
And folds the continents as easily as it folds the clouds.

Chicago Night

Eternal Youth

"Not everyone grows old, but everyone dies."

The Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo

(397 - 398 AD)

African Iris

Congaree River, Near Columbia

Elmwood Cemetery

LUNCH IN ELMWOOD CEMETARY

We, an indiscriminate crowd, welcome you to lunch,
Impotent shadows of the past, not tortured in a Greek Hell,
But in the common grave of mankind, the abode of the dead,
Where the bad and the good, the slave and the master,
The pious and the wicked who share this life
Obediently follow the sunless chemistry of our bodies
To cure among stones according to some cosmic purpose
A great, indefatigable cohesion, an undiscovered Law
Awareness so useful we dare to call it Knowledge
An ignorance so vast we can safely call it God.

Imagine us in our young flesh without scars
Hoping someone vain and reckless will notice
Longing for gratification above the ground, an embrace,
A wound of passion in the earth that exhales our dust
A chance to rise above the sound of motion as reliable as the tides
Where the wise and foolish labor with equal skill to ignore us
Until they open the earth to bury or remove something.

There is no better way to make a man miserable
Than to convince him he should always be happy
Life is trial and error, a search for something that works,
A collection of scars and the stories that go with them
The happiest among us learn to laugh about them
Then leave one last scar on those who love us most
You shall know them by their tears and laughter.

For those who suffered in life, death is joy
For those who loved and were loved, death is sorrow
For those who had nothing, death is a world they already know
For those who had everything, death is a final and sumptuous act of charity
A command to let it all go and get out of the way
Our grave is just another act of creation
A vestige of our beginning, no prospect of the end.

Turbulence, Two

AN UNCERTAIN MOTION

An uncertain motion begins things,
Like smoke rising up from a fire
The turbulent air of summers and springs
Setting bounds on unstable desire.

Turbulence, One

"In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.

This was the ultimate belief on which all the systems elaborated by human thought in almost all their ramifications rested. It was the prevalent conviction, and of all other explanations Levin had unconsciously, not knowing when or how, chosen it, as anyway the clearest, and made it his own.

But it was not merely a falsehood, it was the cruel jeer of some wicked power, some evil, hateful power, to whom one could not submit.

He must escape from this power. And the means of escape every man had in his own hands. He had but to cut short this dependence on evil. And there was one means — death.

And Levin, a happy father and husband, in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he hid the cord that he might not be tempted to hang himself, and was afraid to go out with his gun for fear of shooting himself.

But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living."

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1873 - 1877)

A Gift Stolen from the Gods

Whale Branch, Coosaw River

Stinking Creek

Dutch Fork Sunset

Barker Dam, Joshua Tree National Park

Biltmore House

All art aspires to be like music.

Antigua Petals

Congaree National Park

Life has a design, and we are its intelligence.

Niagara Falls Rainbow

Spreading Branch