Waiting for Yayoi Kusama?

The weekend was intense.

This record of events is my brain’s external memory because it’s all important. I’m going to have to turn comments off now, after those wonderful discussions about ethics, because life is just piling itself on pretty heavily for a while. I think I can keep on making photographs most days, but I will have to stop responding to comments. I’ll comment when I can, and when things let up a bit, I’ll turn mine back on. But here’s the weekend:

11 a.m. Saturday, last meeting of Portland Buddhist Peace Fellowship (no photos). We decided we no longer have the capacity to organize public protests, meditations, and demonstrations. It was a good run, from 2014 to 2024. Just barely a decade, by a matter of days, entirely worth what it cost us in time and effort, but not possible now. 

3 p.m. Saturday, an afternoon with a couple of people we are coming to know and love (no photos). Hearing their stories of trauma, survival, and resilience. Listening with respect. Talking some. Hoping to hear more and know them better.

9 a.m. Sunday, an online gathering of over 300 Buddhists outraged by the genocide in Gaza, brainstorming what to do, being educated by people in Jerusalem, being seared by the reality (no photos). Bhikkhu Bodhi writes, “The blistering bombardments, the ever-mounting death toll, the deadly blockade of vital essentials, the annihilation of innocent human lives—all these events sear the moral consciousness like a red-hot iron.” His words planted in me a new notion. I have to sit with it and think about it, try it on, see if it needs alterations to fit better. A superb teacher, he leaves us with fresh ideas.

2 p.m. Sunday, the last performance of the Oregon Symphony for this season (today’s photo, with a shadow that gives us new information), featuring an amazing piece by a young woman composer named Gabriella Smith (who was present for the performance). She writes a soundscape in which musical instruments make, instread of notes, sounds we have not heard instruments make before: the sounds of insects, rainstorms, winds, a planet full of wonders. A planet at risk. Here is one minute of the piece we heard, to give a vague idea.  Other compositions on her website.

5 p.m. Sunday, an online meeting of our meditation group, meeting for fourteen years (it’s how I met Sue). We are developing a new format, meeting in person more often, lightening up, adapting to the three “Divine Messengers” of Buddhist tradition: sickness, old age, and death.

10:40 a.m. Monday, appointment to renew my driver’s license. My last, I’m sure, as it renews after 9 years, and if I haven’t died or quit driving by then it will be past time for me to give it up. I needed a vision test (passed) and a new photograph. That photograph surprised me. It is a photograph of an ancient person. There is something I vaguely recognize in that very old face—something that reminds me of someone. But hell. Who is that old woman?