MEDITATION on SHIMMERING PALMS

Meditation on Shimmering Palms

On more days and nights, an invalid,
In pain and loss, I often just want to go...
Unconscious;
But then, again, I stare out
To the wind and sun
From our upstairs
Window;

There tower above, 2 lone palms
In sight from my weak haven
Swaying in that blue expanse
In a lively coastal wind,
Their mop-tops of slender fronds
Shimmering
Like flashing magnesium flares
From brilliant reflecting
Sunshine.

Those two undulating sentinels dance
over/above my fading consciousness,
Ailing awareness--
A duo/two unconscious guards,
While I lay here filled with sacred
Remembrance, mindful
Of my former festive living,
Becoming, and doing...

Yes, the wonder of being a human primate
Living, but finite, so brief, and this
Gift, this Present
Shimmering--
Then we’re gone.



new poem from Dan Wilcox,
the mutant poet:-)

Living Forward, leaving our dead-past behind

I age into olding years, and my mind forgets what I did yesterday or--smoke!
--already forgot I turned on the broiler 10 minutes ago.
Even the name of my favorite poet won’t show up in my mind, and I have to go over
to one of our many bookshelves and run my fingers down until a biography of her shows up.
Good grief.

Yet in the middle of the many a sleepless night, my brain harps on mistakes, also-ran diligent efforts, regrets, tragedies of 30, 40, 50 years ago...

So it was serendipitous that recently I came across an old Walt Whitman poem—“O Living always...”


O LIVING always—Always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am
content;)
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn
and look at where I cast them,
To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses
behind.

--Walt Whitman

I’m not imperious, and am confused why Whitman would still be wielding such a corpse-creating wrong.

BUT I do find myself dragging untold numbers of heavy former corpses—chained to me now, dragging me down and backward—
as I struggle up life’s sisyphusian mountain crag.

And dragging dead 'me’s' is far more difficult than rolling a large rock like the Greek did.

So, in this new year of 2019, every day, I resolved and am working each day to cut loose more past 'me’s'
the dead ashed lapses of the past,
and cast them backward into
the before n’ gone chasm.

Rejoicing in growing Redwood sprouts I planted in the past, here and now, I am--

LIVING FORWARD!

LIVING THE A’S

AWAKE
AWARE
AMAZED
AWED
ALERT
ANALYTICAL
ALTRUISTIC
ARDENT
AVID
ADVANCE

To become new in the present moment, not be a corpse’d has been—regressing, regretting, reverting…

As the wise teacher Thich Nhat Hanh wrote:

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

To Eat or Not to Eat: That Is the Question--Sounds Fishy

Is There a Moral Case for Eating Meat?

Is Vegetarianism a Virtue?

Do We Need to Give Animals a Life Worth Living?

Are Human Beings Meant to Eat Meat?

Why Are Only About 1% of Humans Vegans?
--

Here's the beginning of an intriguing, thought-provoking article from Vox and Grist:

"Is There a Moral Case for Eating Meat?"

by Nathanael Johnson

"Where are the philosophers arguing that eating meat is moral?

When I started researching this piece, I’d already read a lot of arguments against meat, but I hadn’t seen a serious philosophical defense of carnivores. So I started asking around. I asked academics, meat industry representatives, and farmers: Who was the philosophical counterweight to Peter Singer?

In 1975, Singer wrote Animal Liberation, which launched the modern animal rights movement with its argument that causing animal suffering is immoral. There are plenty of other arguments against eating animals besides Singer’s, going back to the ancient Greeks and Hindus. There are even arguments that Christianity contains a mandate for vegetarianism. Matthew Scully’s Dominion argues against animal suffering; Scully rejects Singer’s utilitarian assertion that humans and animals are equal but says that, since God gave people “dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth,” so we have a responsibility to care for them and show them mercy.

The arguments against eating animals are pretty convincing. But surely, I thought, there were also intellectuals making convincing counterarguments. Right? Nope. Not really..."

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/9/9122907/meat-ethics


http://grist.org/food/is-there-a-moral-case-for-meat/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed
--

As you probably remember from a past post, I am on a long journey toward vegetarianism. Currently, I am mostly a fishetarian (read crab, salmon, catfish, etc.) though occasionally I eat foul food;-) with my extended family and friends.

I resigned off pig many years ago. Easy for me to do since I don't like pork. Then left the cattle grazing on a thousand hills about 15 years or so ago. (Though, when my allergies let me, I still borrow cheese and milk.)

Back in the late 60's, my first vegetarian experiment came about because of the influence of a friend. Shortly before she went down to D.C. for King's March on Washington, she adopted vegetarianism. By the time I was in full swing, living on only vegetable, fruits, and nuts, she quit and resumed meat dishes. But me, I went nuts.

Yes, I followed the radical advice of health food fanatics including a 6-medal Olympic swimming star, Murray Rose. It worked for him and others.*

Bode Miller

http://www.ecorazzi.com/2012/07/27/top-10-historic-vegetarian-and-vegan-olympians/

One can't become an Olympic star easily. But my body couldn't handle a vegan only diet. I lost almost 50 pound, down to about 117, when I ought have weighed 175! Got malnurished. Looked like a stupid-sort of gandhi, without the wise side. More of a not-so-wise donkey.

I know that the official name of a fish-eater is pescatarian, but that not only sounds too academic, it sounds like being a pest;-)

Because, this time around, 40 years later, I'm taking vegetarianism slower and wiser, not evangelizing, don't have a knife to grind, just want to move toward a more spiritual and ethical level.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox