final post of the sand mandala. we arrived as Tenzin and others readied for the dismantling. the school wanted the dismantling to occur outside where there was more room for the students to see. it's a boy's school. I thought it was co-ed as girls were around. the table was carried thru the doorway and students gathered round. some of the faculty spoke a few enriching words then Tenzin gave a glimmer of Buddhist precepts. then he chanted a prayer and while ringing a bell he used a tool to cut the lines of the mandala then invited boys to take a brush and sweep the sand into the centre of the table. now, I don't want to get all exotic about this, the temptation is there, but a sense of the life of the work was very evident. in seeing it created, in how he approached it: you could think of it as a world. after the ceremony the sand was to be taken to the Concord River, the selfsame by which I was born. we went there with a woman and her son who we know. the sky pended imminent thumper. the site where Tenzin would release the sand was where we had encountered the winter solstice celebration on our wedding anniversary last year. a place that native Americans were said to hold dear, and where colonists pastured their cattle. Tenzin sat at the river's edge and chanted then took the jar of sand and, ringing a bell and chanting, poured it here and there into the water. rain fell as he did so. when he finished, the windows of heaven opened, with thunder and lightning. a release, I should say, that seemed quite a propos. pictures at 11.

we made another visit to the sand mandala. when we arrived, no one was around. soon Tenzin scuttled in and got back to work.it's a slow process requiring patience. people came in and out. several students addressed him familiarly. classes, no doubt, were brought to him. one faculty member, presumably, asked if she could ask a question. to wit: Tenzin what am I going to do without you. having become used to the sound of his scraping funnels, and his presence... yes yes yes, lovely. it wasn't too far from flirting. I guess he'd heard it before. he gave her sermon about accepting the moment and not grasping. he was a pretty funny fellow. yesterday Erin said, I have 3 questions for you, and he repeated oh three, as if it were amazing. chuckling as he said it. and he answered everything Erin threw at him. I asked about a repeated figure on the mandala, which was in every outer segment. he explained. a bit after, I noticed one of the segments lacked the symbol. I waited till a break in his work to point that out. he'd been talking about contentment, being able to die happy, so I said, when he began to fill in the lapse, now I can die happy. I admit to having an inclination towards buddhism, but very little practice. you think of Jim Behrle going all Holden Caulfield worrying about phonies, feh, that nervous reputation chatter. what's more interesting is being present and letting the moment. I mean, reading an agenda, that's a pretty slow beat to dance to. whereas what is poetry but reading a life of language in some present when one writes. the chuckle above that seems so pale and worthless. I say seem, I only mean how it strikes me.

okay so here's the cartoon that came to me. two people standing, dressed as firefighters. one holds some sort of contraption. a human head can be seen on the ground near a headless corpse. the head has a befuddled expression. the one without the contraption says to the other, 'I said the Jaws of Life, Jenkins, not the Jaws of Death'. great, huh? you will note the canny use of the name Jenkins, this being one of the official names to be used in cartoon punchlines. nota bene, in style this cartoon would be drawn Thurberesquely. like in his cartoon in which a fencer lops off his opponent's head, crying 'touche', the point is bloodlessness, and the feeling that severed heads can be plopped back into place. I woke in the middle of the night with this cartoon in my head.

Ven. Tenzin Yignyen

Ven. Tenzin Yignyen, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

altar

deities

applying sand with funnel (Chakpu)

etc

just saw a Tibetan sand mandala in production. the work of Ven. Tenzin Yignyen, who currently teaches at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. he was set up in a room at a starchy private school in Concord. a pissa nice art facility, as it happens. he was in a room with lots of paintings on the wall. plus some masks that resembled, to my mind, Tibetan deities. the work of students. I took pictures, which was okay with him, but Blogger wasn't into it, and they landed on my blog with a great deal of extra space, so I removed them and will try otherwise. his work began monday, setting up and chanting. a couple of thangka were on the wall and below that a table with unlit candles and glasses of saffron tea. offerings. Beth and Erin saw a much larger mandala done in Boise, which 6 monks worked on. it was a healing mandala. here the table was a bit larger than a card table, and the mandala itself maybe as much as 42" across. a compassion mandala. when we arrived a boy was sitting nearby playing guitar. other students came and went. the person from who we learned of the event, a homeschooler, arrived with her son. we stayed for about an hour. we'll try to make a visit tomorrow, and on friday, when it is dismantled. for an artist, the sense of impermanence is difficult. we all have glimmers that we lose, and you never know when something might get lost. or as the resident dog has done in periods of nervous distress (worries of abandonment), namely, eaten paintings by both Beth and me. there's a certain egolessness in art, in its creation, yet when the work is complete and free to bumble about the world, we tend to become more possessive. my work. so it goes. Stephen Vincent's mother seems to be facing these issues now, both holding on, at times, and letting go. that wish to stay, that urge to go.

Stephen Vincent faces the aging parent with equanimity, as this post attests. what more can I comment? in my own test, I was wearied by the daily grind of it, of the father who is the child to the man. one does what one can. I learned something larger than me in serving the father, or the moment. in serving the mother, differently and long ago. I cannot presume some right way, but I see language at overwhelming mercy of the imperative. that our words won't hold all we want, that life strides past. language isn't mastered.

I cycled to Great Meadows yesterday. it's a Nat'l Wildlife Preserve not far away. Thoreau mentions it on page 1 of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack. a dike runs down the middle of it, with water on both sides. 2 Canada geese looked like they might block my way but they sashayed away when I approached. I saw what I briefly thought might be white domestic geese up ahead but realized it was a pair of swans. one was in the water and the other on shore and both paid me no never mind. I got as close as 5' from them. seemed like I could get closer, but thoughts of their rows of razor sharp teeth, and of being just one more victim of murderous swans, I kept back. lots of pictures, tho. even some movies of some other swans in flight. they make an odd, raspy metallic sound as they fly. is it their wings or their breathing? as graceful as they are on water, they stumble with take offs and landings. they launch by running on the top of the water till they can pull themselves into the air. they glide into landings, stick their feet out and crash into the water. when I showed Beth some of the pix, she wanted to go over. I hadn't seen swans there before. we got back out there, with Erin, around 5, with the sun at a slant to the west across the water. Beth took lots of nice pictures and Erin picture and some excellent movies. all hail the digital camera. we saw a great blue heron in the distance. as we watched a crowd of barking geese hounded the bird and it flew grandly away. a goose on the path was intent on browse for food, so I got close. at the too close point it gave me quite a look, and I backed off.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Lowell canal

Lowell canal, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

Erin's spring formal last night, an effort to give homeschoolers a promish event. Erin was buffed up in his suit, looked great. he has a properly matched tie but chose to where one of mine, derived from a painting by Henri Rousseau. of course he couldn't possibly button the top button for fear of asphyxiation. no age restriction really to this event, as befits homeschooling philosophy, so it wasn't so valedictory as I imagine (never having prommed) most proms are. the parents seemed generally giddier than the kids. in essence the parents put the show on, cooking and decorating and what not. the theme was Mexican, which I didn't get until I realized that it was Cinco de Mayo. anyone ever hear the Coronas radio ad with the jingle that proclaimed "it's the drinko of Cinco de Mayo"? man, you've got to have a finger on the sensitive button to limn lines like that. the dj was playing fairly drippy Mexican music. not likely to inspire. we left before much blending began, and the dj did turn on the real music eventually. one boy wore a t-shirt and had his tie on backwards. another wore a tux and vampire teeth. there was one girl, expressly boho in jeans and I think beret, and a few goth types. a cool, drama club boy with long hair, he played Mercutio in the recent production, wore a dark green jacket, navy velour bellbottoms, a deep green polo shirt and shades. we picked Erin up at midnight, with "Stairway to Heaven" properly loud. I used to think it was a mighty song, but it doesn't hold up so well. Jimmy Page sucks as a soloist, for all his other genius, and squeal me no Robert Plant, I'm afraid. I don't know how many of these kids would go to their proms were they in public school. many, I believe, would be marginalized in the public school hierarchy. think of Janis Joplin going back to her high school ten years later, as Janis Joplin. the most common question by public school parents is about how homeschoolers socialize. in fact, homeschooling parents spend their time finding ways to get their kids into social situations. and not just dumping them off to sports teams, clubs and other organized configurations, but much more varied possibilities. there are fewer compartments into which homeschoolers are put, nerd type, cheerleader type, jock type, victim type. I didn't have a gruesome time in public school, but I didn't flourish either. in the 7 years in which Erin has been in my life I have been able to reexamine the experience. my last 2 years of high school, I was a serious if not adept writer, yet I had no sense that what I did was anything but extracurricular. the school's literary journal was for those who joined in. it was a club, and those imitative scrids that were published were part of a potlatch economy. it demands a step back to see the burden of the social complex on public school students, how so much of the school experience is about normalizing kids. well, I've orated enough. Erin's a unique, wonderful young man. we should honour the idiosyncrasies not try to erase them, which I believe is what homeschooling aims at.

I enjoy Kasey Mohammad's movie encapsulations, especially lately an apparent attempt to review the entire Hammer Films oeuvre. remember when these were on every saturday afternoon, and you chose to pass them by and watch or do something worthwhile instead? I haven't seen one of them in at least half a gazillion years but now I yearn. what these films offer, and a lot of films likewise, is how the movie experience as viewer's receive it is nothing like what the filmmakers intended. where the film is supposed to be terrifying, you're laughing, where it's supposed to be lovely, you're creeped out. author function, author function. you, as a viewer, feel a release in these movies, you're untethered. you're clearly part of the generative process. whereas in poetry, don't we feel constricted as we read? the tactics by which poets try to waylay the interpretative imperative, I mean all the processes of disengagement (from) that have arisen in the this 'modern' era, to release poetry into its own world and not some critical containment, these tactics are essential in the fight. a pall of complacency hangs over poetry. it's not just academic-sclerosis, the freezing of poetry into controlled intellectual dollops, it's also emotional-sclerosis, in which poetry is seen as an outlet for emotion, and other sclerotic events as well. whereas movies can bust a move on us, or we on them. I think Citizen Kane is the corniest movie around but even in that corniness there's some power or effect that's close to the door of transcendence. I don't know what to do about poetry except open myself up to weirdness and dismay. I mean that's the ticket, rather than remain guarded or controlled. so I take these Hammer film reviews by Kasey seriously, as visions of poetry unbound. go ahead and laugh.

Erin's birthday yesterday, the big One Eight. he was eleven when Beth and I married. seems like yesterday, yet so much has passed in our lives, the three of us. I guess I don't have the words right now to speak further. we will have a party for Erin next week. he goes to a Spring Formal tonight, homeschoolers en masse. yesterday, well, we made our way to Barnes & Noble, the default place to go. for some reason, I looked avidly at the leather bound journals. I used to think such were la-de-dah, and preferred to stick with spiral bound notebooks for my limning needs. Beth got me interested in using bound journals, which I do occasionally now. one's writing changes with milieu, so to speak. I noted that Alan Davies carried a small yellow lined notepad, which, personally, I would avoid for the pages being easily detachable. but that could be an advantage. do you have funny little ways? I hate taking pages out of a spiral notebook. like it matters. but someone asks, can I have a piece of paper and I'm holding a notebook, and I'm like, er. honestly. so those journals with the wrap around leather flap and the leather tie thing seem so cool. but in sooth such notebooks are no more handy than, so I gave the temptation a pass. B&N seems like a wise and knowing place, as you scan about. quite a large display, and handy, of books on poker, for example. finger on the cultural pulse. check out the eye-popping displays and you can see where we stand. a friend of mine long ago remarked about The Gong Show that it gave us a comprehensive view of ourselves. so it's poker, and how to cook Cajun, and pilates, etc. okay, I find this fascinating. I was quite tempted by a book on gladiators. I mean, that's the weird part of history. I saw a finely wrought book about a mountain climber who, a blurbist wrote, made the most elegant climb of Everest. I don't even fathom what that means. it was an expensively produced book aimed, I wot, at a particular audience. I'm fascinated by Everest but there's a point past which I don't want to go, armchair traveler-wise. the poetry section remains dull. I should be tempted by the David Shapiro selected but it was a hardback with that kind of pre-emptive brusqueness that larger poetry publishers inveigh upon their books. it's a dust-attracting quality that puts me off. what????? I mean the smell of poetry books at the library, where they moulder unread. this has nothing to do with Shapiro, who I've hardly read. and yet, maybe it does. maybe I want my poetry books to be crappy editions, that I can scribble in, that don't have 2" margins, that... okay, I'm raving. I saw a book by Harryette Mullen, who people hold in higher regard than I do, I guess. I find her work ordinary, which, I know, is harsh. every poetry book at B&N looks tired, or nearly so. UCal came out with a paperback edition of Berrigan's collected, which, honestly, looks more attractive to me than the luscious hardback. it's smaller, handier and just seems more right. that's sort of what I mean about the Shapiro. B&N has a lot of manga but displays them wretchedly. they only show the spines, which are crowded and hard to read, so it's difficult to see what's what. I hate how you had ought to buy all 10 of the series, for just $99.99. I did see one 'starring' Avril Lavigne, who is described as a 'rebel rocker'. I don't think so but you may disagree. Beth found the graphic novel version of 300. it just lacked the splendid ridiculousness of the movie. the bloodletting, and falling into space and Rupaul as Xerxes: all that is much more visceral and effective in the movie. anyway, Erin something D&D, Beth some gifts plus a book on religion and a Terry Pratchett that somehow she'd missed and me nuthin'. we ate out at the cheap Italian restaurant in town. this restaurant supplies the center of town with the exquisite smell of garlic, tho that garlic doesn't seem to show up in any dishes. the place is always packed. we arranged Happy Birthday to be sung by the waitresses when dessert came. drove around after dinner. headed dreictly towards the radiant orb. what, are you stepping westward? into the New England countryside. some horsy towns, some factory owns. I love New England's factories, set by rivers. most are no longer factories but condos or otherwise used. busy little towns. and for garden artistry, just plant daffodils. pests don't mess with daffodil, and they flourish. yesterday, it seems, the season popped. verdure starting in the trees, blossoms, and bonanza of bulbs a-bloom. tis fine. drove past the hospital where my grandmother died 30 years agone. I remember the nearby apple orchards blooming at the time. I remember, too, several trips to her place to deal with her effects. on one of these trips there was the young Paul Tsongas on the campaign trail. him and another person walking along the road, chatting up whoever would meet with them. and on the way back, there they were, still plodding on, coats off on a warm spring day. Congress, Senate, a feint at the presidency, now the Tsongas Center in Lowell, as memory. anyway, the scraggly and other virtues of apple trees make them my favourite. if I must choose. the Concord River, spread very wide, looked lovely in the gloaming. then home to the nuclear dog, cat and fish.

I take my role as Boston Poet Laureate seriously, which is why I peer so carefully into the mailbox for the free books. when I say seriously, I mean I know there will be poets coming after me, aiming to kill me so that they may take my laurel crown (which, free advice, you hadn't ought to wear to bed). so with that elegant preamble, it behooves me to note that there seems to be a recent photo of the young Elizabeth Browning on Nada Gordon's blog (the cover to Foreignn Bodie). she's also correct to cite Lanny Quarles as Laureate of Comment Boxes, comments from Mars in the bestest sense. I have Folly (Roof 2007), and it is lovely and varied and deserving of far more time than I can manage it or any reading now. I think Ive said this before, but the books by known flarfists that I've read are less easily definable (prone to cubby hole) than the critico-chattery crowd might think. and let me just advert Henry Gould's publishing project. admittedly I down't own all of his book, but I have bought some and recommend all. it's a blow against empire, the publishing claque. a topic the BPL can get growly about.

In The Know: Do You Remember Life Before The Segway?

I guess I'm a nostalgia guy, I was much touched

in the interest of self interest, but then, any self-promotion on my part redounds to the office of Boston Poet Laureate, and thus to Poetry in general, here's one eprson who gets it. we didn't just have a beer together, he bought. certainly I should expect free books in recompense for my being Boston Poet Laureate, but Robert Graves notes in The White Goddess that the traditional stipend for a poet was sherry or sack. sounds good, but I will by no means turn my nose up at a rum and umbrella concoction, should that be what you wish to reward me with, or even a foofy whipcreamy thing from Starbucks. not forgetting the free books. anyway, David's blog is a fun read. aside from his basebally one, he has a quirkier one: Werner Herz blog.

as Boston Poet Laureate I went to the cast party for the Shakespeare productions by our homeschool cooperative. to be honest, I went incognito. can't always be attracting hordes of people who want to meet the BPL, you know, the scene phonies, foets, ambitious power couples of poetry and the like. we showed up as the final production wound down, then helped clean the place up for its normal usage. the cast party happened in a house in the hinterlands. everyone was supplied with Google-inspired directions. about a mile down the road we saw a road that wasn't where Google believed it should be. staunchly, we followed Google's advice. we all know that Google and Mapquest make up street names and distances, and the whole online map industry has been arranged to a fare-thee-well by the big oil cartels. thus we seemed to be getting lost. so we're feeling a desperate, pay-at-the-pump lostness, when lo, up ahead, a bunch of cars parked by the road. we'd found companions in our quest. it added up to 8 cars gathered at the spot. a leadership type was on the phone, and also had the advice of an off duty policeman who'd happened by. steeled by clearer information, and the knowledge that we probably wouldn't need to eat our dead, the convoy moved on. rather humourously, we soon passed the former site of the homeschool cooperative. which, you know, could have been used as a landmark. it was just a few miles and 2 turns from there. the party consisted of just about 100 people. there was a piano, an organ and a drum set that were played most of the night, and a centrally-located pool table that maintained a crowd of avid players. the noise level, I'm trying to say, was considerable. I did speak with Juliet, the one I saw perform, because she noted in the scorecard that she does morris dancing. her voice is high and soft such that it seems inadequate for stagework but she manages to project and enunciate onstage. very talented. eventually we left for home, and found it, no prob.

like Napoleon snatching the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, I rather precipitously grabbed the mantle of Boston Poet Laureate. I mean I'm like, what should a poet laureate of anywhere do, and more specifically the Boston one? worth a few thinks. I'm pretty sure I should get lots of free books, poetry ones, I suppose, tho I'm open to most anything. and I guess I'll promote poetry or whatever. I mean hey, poetry's great!!! anyway, if you got any ideas what I, as your Boston Poet Laureate, should do, in terms of being Boston Poet Laureate and all, send them to me, along with the free books, of course. I'm here to serve.