Places and Times Intertwined:
The Clock Ticks Within the Mind
By Michael P. Garofalo
The hills around Port Orford glowed in Spring green time. Tututni speakers native to this land fished the sea as we do these days. Tseriadum Beach agate hunters spy the sand so carefully, hoping to find today a jem of a rock, shined by the sand, washed by the waves. On the Humbug Mountain steep cliff-side trails, young hikers daily challenge themselves. My memories of experiences at this seaside place are mixed, fixed, and jumbled with port docks, Sea Crest motel rooms, sexy dates, Coast Guard museums, quiet restaurants, cranberry plots, the Cape Blanco lighthouse, and myrtlewood shops.
The details are many, expanding, evolving, being born in Time. The details of places become rooted in my mind's times. Time becomes Things, Things become Time. Memories give meaning to spaces, places give meaning to remembered times.
When were we there? What did we do? Why did we come? Where was where? Zoom in on the answers considered, zoom out for a raggedy bigger View. Hurry, don't rise, time is fleeting from where you sit, slipping away from an idea's view, but blossoming like orange Rhododendrons set against the Fir borders of the sky.
Details on Details, Zoom In
The endless treasures of the everyday,
the uncommonness of common things;
Ordinary mind does point the way
to unspoken wonders of myriad beings.
Whether a leaf, the moon, a plastic spoon,
or a shoe, an eye, an infant's cry;
the endless parade, zoom out, in zoom,
Details on details, thick, piled high.
Cellular seedpods pulsing pure time,
Flowering brains clone families of minds
that revel in thinking to the Infinite edge,
agog over life, and love of knowledge.
Whether, a quasar, a hand, a DNA strand,
Fantastic journeys in the Minds of Women.
The Bottom Line
"The kinds of thing are more important than the
Individual thing, though the specific is supremely
Interesting. Right?"
- John Ashbery
"Caress the detail, the divine detail."
- Vladimir Nabokov
“We think in generalities, but we live in details.”
- W. H. Auden
"The idea of one overbearing truth is exhausted."
- Thomas Mann
“A profound attention to the details of this world.”
- George Levine
“Cherish the happy minutes”
- Charles Baudelaire
“The vast and unsuspected reality of small things"
- Robert Nozick
“We are better satisfied in particulars.”
- Wallace Stevens
"God is in the details." - Mies Van Der Rohe
“Details are all there are.” - Maezumi Roshi
“Focus on small worlds of order.” - Paul Valery
“No ideas but in things." - William Carlos Williams
"To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be enlightened
By the ten thousand things."
- Soto Zen Master Dogen
Embodied Time: Flowers in Sky Time
Drifting snowflakes covered me,
to show us how January Reigns
by frozen filigree or chilly rain
falling on Mt. Olympus by the sea.
Retreating to my cold canvas hut,
resigned to read and sip tea;
covered up in dry warm wool,
thick blanket over my knees.
Opened up a classic Soto Zen
tome to read: Master Dogen's
"Treasury of the True Dharma Eye"
"Moon in a Dewdrop: Shobogenzo."
"Flowers in Space: Kuge."
Phenomena actualized,
Everywhere, All the Time.
On the ground, in the sky,
in my Eyes, in my Mind;.
Noumea left unspecified.
My False Eyes saw, creatively,
mirrored back and forth by me,
distorted by my Inner Visions,
seeing metaphors strive
to find meaning in Dogen's
Echizen Temple rooted Zen mind.
I wrote:
In a flaming burst,
they kiss the earth,
shout to the sky:
"White! Pink! Yellow!"
Orchards of plums and peaches,
Acres of mustard-greens.
The Flowers of Time!
From the Ten Directions:
Spring brings on flowers,
Flowers bring on Spring.
Coming, here, gone:
Dogwood Flowers in the Sky.
In the blink of one false eye,
In the blink of One True Eye,
Flowers in the empty sky;
Shimmering, scented ... gone,
Gone, gone, gone far beyond
Their seeds of arising.
But, staying, Here-Now,
A Great Marvel of Manifestation.
Bodhisattva's - for the Bees.
Soil, sea, sun, rain, sky ...
Eight Elements embracing,
Intertwined in mind.
Unfathomable Matrix;
Scaffolds on scaffolds
Grounded in Otherness.
Below seeds, flowers, leaves,
stems, roots ...
Below wet cells embraced,
Below atoms dancing on Energy...
Deeper and deeper below into
What? A Plenitude, a sacredness.
Emptiness in full bloom.
Above seeds, flowers, leaves,
stems, roots, fruits
Above water, soil, roots, branches,
Above the steams, lakes, and Sea,
Above sensing, feeling, working,
thinking ...
Higher and higher out towards
What?
"Vast emptiness, nothing holy."
Flowers Falling from the sky.
Leaping from the Ledge of Infinite Regress,
The Unmoved Mover fell into Formlessness:
Pure silence echoed between the galaxies,
Eons of eons vanished in a second,
Withered trees bloomed in fires,
The Oceans covered all the Land,
Polar mountains melted, rivers went dry,
Thusness scattered in sixty directions,
Space became Time, time became things.
Black Holes filled with Nirvana,
A billion samadhi mirrors shattered,
Galaxies snuggled within a single skull,
Many became One, One only, only One.
Then,
the Divine Illuminatrix in All Beings
Opened Her clouded Eye, to see:
Flowers Opening in the Sky.
He sat for weeks under the Bodhi Tree
Before the morning sun Opened his Eyes;
Lotus blossoms fell from the sky.
She walked through the Gateless Gate,
Upright, staff in hand;
Rhododendrons flowered by the Sea,
Plum blossoms opened across the land.
She sat and sat,
Till yea was nay, and nay was yea;
While roses bloomed on day by day.
Gnawing on his koan bone,
Suddenly, the taste of insight;
Amid sea grasses on the dunes,
Blue flowers amidst the grave sites.
Illusions, delusions, foolishness:
Those flowers falling from the sky.
Only our Mind's Eyes
Wishing for otherwise;
As always, embracing fertile lies.
Surfing daydreams of the past,
Spinning fictions over facts;
Myth making, playful, eager to act,
Seeing what we want to see,
Seeking, yea saying, seeding,
giving it a try.
Having faith in Flowers in the Sky.
These yellow poppies reveal time,
These sweet razor clams taste time,
These brown seeds generate time.
The seashells speak of past time.
These gray leafless trees show time.
The Earth is Time; the Sky is Time.
And the five fingers of one black hand hold time,
And the blinking of two blue eyes cry time.
The dirty garden hoe and hoses water time,
The fishing line drops to the bottom of time,
And greasy tractor gears work time.
The snows on Mt. Ranier glacier time,
Moving Reedsport sand dunes cover time,
Cold ocean waves at Oceanside cut time,
Hood Canal ravens break open time,
The onion seedlings in Salinas sweeten time,
The roaring Feather River rapids erode time;
Ventura flower fields color time.
Remembering is time, forgetting is time.
Black lines of scripture tell times,
Great and small doubts reveal time,
Hungry ghosts and naked demons are time,
Newborn Gods were conceived in time.
Death is time, and conception is time.
Vulgar time, broken time,
Our time, space-time, in time,
The Right time, before time, Sublime time,
Standard time, beyond time, past time.
Dream Time of a still body-mind is time.
Time and Time again,
Explaining All and not
explaining any-thing.
From Being-Lost, with no abode,
selfless, bone dry;
Comes the time-Now
for the enlightened cry:
"Flowers in the Sky!"
The Arrows of Time
never rest,
moving forward unrelenting
irreversible:
from hot towards cold
from stream to Sea
from organized to disorganized
from past to future
from moving towards stillness
from life towards death.
Or,
so it seems,
to us,
with our little particulars,
with our home brew views,
with our social habits a must.
The Spiderwebs of Time
are legion
multitudes of nows and thens;
Uncountable heres and theres
unhitched
from any eternal present
everywhere.
To Dance at the Still Point
Of the Time beyond time,
Beyond pasts, within futures,
this Moment
Now and forever, beyond
ordinary minds.
Imagine what the Will can Do,
Cannot do, will not do.
Imagine more.
Please,
remove the offered flowers
from the great stone Buddha's hands,
before he's blown up at Bamiyan;
and the dust and stones flying high,
Hide the flowers in the sky.
The Buddha raised one flower
Sharing a silent sign;
Maha-Kasyapa smiled,
Keeping an open mind.
Truly eye to eye, free and kind,
Outside any scriptures, beyond any lies;
Fresh flowers in a sunny sky.
Flower petals in the sky.
We stroll in rose gardens, and Love.
Precious flowers in the sky.
Speechless, Master Dogen stared,
Shivering in a turning white world
Raising cold dawn moons.
Bright white millions on millions
Of drifting flowery flakes
Fell fast from the Echizen sky.
Ice pure, elemental, quintessential
Wet, imperfect, flowing time
Packed by the hour, deeper,
Deeper down to Winter's core.
The Temple of Eternal Peace creaked,
Snowflakes gathered on Dogen's robe,
One icy crystal streaked the True Eye
Glimpsing into Itself;
Another transmission:
Lovely tulips in the Sky.
25 Steps and Beyond:
Collected Works of Mike Garofalo
Quintains and Tanka: Bundled Up
Mike Garofalo lives in Vancouver, Washington.
He worked for 50 years in city and county
public
libraries, and in elementary
schools.
He graduated with
degrees in
philosophy,
library science, and education. He has been
a web publisher since 1998.
January 23, 2025