tra la Lorn'

Wouldn't it be demmed embarrassing? — to die angry; to die downhearted; to die stingy; to die whiny; to die arrogant; to die ungrateful; to die worried; to die squabbling; to die despairing; to die superstitious; to die cross;

And then you could have wrathful ḍakinīs, or goblins or whatever you like, dancing in the air around you and singing merrily

Rotten deathday to you
You've built you a zoo
You look like a monkey
You act like one, too

(No offense intended to monkeys. I don't see that they do these things more than we do.)

Be my friend: Kick me in the pants if you see me in any of these states. "Yo, Loren — ready to die?"

Good evening.

I hope you won't mind if I begin again with a moment from the first teaching the Buddha gave. It keeps thudding home for me. It didn't used to.

The Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering is this: It is this thirst (craving) which produces re-existence and re-becoming, bound up with passionate greed. It finds fresh delight now here and now there, namely, craving for sense-pleasures; craving for existence and becoming; and craving for self-annihilation.

The word that keeps coming up in this passage means first of all thirst and, figuratively, craving.

Even though I live in the desert and it's high summer and right now I've been too long at the computer, still I'm embarrassed that ending this post I'm dashing off to get a drink of water.

I actually said this, 'round midnight last night, after a long, long day of making music, morning to night.

Slightly nervous but happy, that I can say that, in the quiet.

Oh, pain is pain
I will say it again
"Into each life some rain"
But pain is pain

Oh it hurts when it hurts
Just ask the experts
Don't it come in spurts
All the introverts
Even extroverts
Know it hurts when it hurts


Oh grief is grief
And there is no relief
Whistle froo your teef
How krief iv krief

Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom
This is what they call gloom
So let's all leave the room
As you file out, sing
"Death, where is thy sting?"
Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing

With Veterans' Day (Armistice Day) recently past, a lot of the little United States flags waving close by graves at the dear cemetery in my neighborhood are brandy-new. Close to the gravelled path is one headstone I'd never much noticed until someone planted a new flag next to it - right next to it - so close that it obscures part of the name carved on the stone.

Which part of the name? Depends. When the breeze is from the west or southwest, the direction of the prevailing winds here, the name you see on the headstone is ( this. )

Just the kind of help I need, and just the kind of shock I go there to get. I hope you may find it to be a useful cue for you, too.

In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters proud of his extensive correspondence has not heard from himself this long while.

— Thoreau

I want to learn to love everybody — and who says I can't?

Belly laughs rang across the cove when I realized:

Loren has appointed Loren ombudsman to hear all parties' complaints arising with respect to the care and loving discipline of Loren by Loren.




It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

The term "special interest group(s)" is applied to groups of other people for the purpose of portraying oneself as representing something more important, more universal than they.

In American civic life, other uses for the phrase are rare.

When someone uses it, they're being in essence very frank with us about what they aim to do to those people: cut them out; take their clout; get listened to instead of them.

Here I am at the library, and one minute ago I saw out of the corner of my eye on a neighbor's screen some ad blaring, "Does someone you know have Alzheimer's?"

And of course for a moment I read it as "Does someone know you have Alzheimer's?"