
In this world, we walk on the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers
– Kobayashi Issa
In this world, we walk on the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers
– Kobayashi Issa
The hardest thing for me to accept was that my life was what it was everyday.
– Jim Harrison, from Everyday Life: The Question of Zen
Secure Scuttlebutt is a social network where you and your friends share your posts between your own computers. When I write a post, it's stored on my own computer in a folder. When I connect to the network, I download all the new posts from all my friends, and my…
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What if you could host your website without any dedicated server at all? What if you could publish your website from your computer, and have your website visitors help you host it?…
A row of pigeons nestle on a streetlight, all in a line like muddy popcorn on a string – a dumpy Christmas decoration. From the office window they look warm in the cold fog. The whole scene would be better with snow, but the snow hasn't come yet and the cold damp reigns in mist over the season.
The pigeons are greeted by a friend who jumps into a small gap in the ranks, rustling his wet feathers and nodding to his mates. One large and grizzled pigeon on the sloping arm of the streetlight takes off. Perhaps there is a pigeon rule for the polite number of cooing friends per streetlight. I'd like to meet whoever spends their life trying to figure that out.
The traffic grinds past below the pigeons. In typical fashion, I am at the office past rush hour. The pigeons look down on the traffic like cameras, judging the poor taste of lonely commuters, unloading on all the Range Rovers, glad to be out in the weather and happy together instead of cramped in traffic and large cars alone.
I am stuck halfway up the stairs staring out the office window at a back alley, a streetlight, and traffic, halfway between the snack I just grabbed and my desk. Instead of finishing the stairs, I am finishing pigeon thoughts to myself, lamely pretending the pigeons are sizing me up from their damp perch.
The stairwell door opens below me and I start, taking my eyes off the birds and my feet up the stairs. Perhaps the birds will sit on my shoulders now, cooing their haiku into my ears as I work, encouraging me with small reminders of my insignificant workaholic flailings, reminding me to change my shirt tonight, to look up, to wonder.
Originally appeared in Nature Writing
They require shade and covering, they require kneaded bread and wine and oil, and if any of these things fails them, they perish; for us, on the other hand, any grass or root serves as bread, the juice of any plant as oil, any water as wine, any tree as a house. Furthermore, this region is familiar to us and is our ally, but to them it is unknown and hostile. As for the rivers, we swim them naked, whereas they do not across them easily even with boats. Let us, therefore, go against them trusting boldly to good fortune. Let us show them that they are hares and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves.
-- Boadicea, as recorded by Dio Cassius in his Roman History
Beautiful day for a snowshoe trip. I parked at the Touchet Corral trailhead, just north of Bluewood Ski Area. North Fork Touchet River Road was iced but plowed and my AWD was able to make it to the parking area just fine.…