Purifying the Physical

Five or six years ago, I read a quote from Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, a revered Tibetan teacher who entered paranirvana in 1991, about the value of doing prostrations. I don't recall the exact words, but the quote related how prostrating was an effective method for purifying physical obstructions.

A physical obstruction would be any kind of ailment, from a virus or other infectious organism, to a bodily injury.

I've read a few of Rinpoche's books over the years and have always found him to be a brilliant teacher. Though he's been gone from this realm for almost 30 years, I still consider him to be one of my gurus. I took the quote to heart and immediately began doing prostrations as part of my practice. I would conclude my meditation practice with a short praise to Manjushri, then prostrate 8 or 10 times.

Since starting this practice, the physical injuries have come thick and fast. I was 49 when I began, so age must certainly be a factor in their occurrence. A quick internet search will reveal all of the pleasant surprises that awaits one when one finishes the fifth decade. It's the beginning of the end. It's your body slowly reaching for that white flag, acknowledging the punishing toll of a life spent resisting gravity and the elements. It's the cold shower of our limitations drenching us as we try to blithely continue doing what we've always done.

But I also believe it's a sign the prostrations are working. Some of these aches and pains and anomalies could be latent physical karma purifying earlier than they otherwise would have. This is one of the effects of purification practices such as this. An ailment that may have arisen later in this life, or even in the next, is suddenly forced to the surface in the present, the practice hastening the ripening of the karma. The advantage is getting the suffering out of the way sooner, ideally leading to a future with fewer health issues.

Before I began prostrating, injuries were rare for me. During all my years of running, I only suffered two calf strains. Both times they healed completely. At the age of 52 however, the calf strain occurred again, and this time it stubbornly refused to heal. Despite taking much time off, only a course of physical therapy led to its recovery. As I ramped up to my former pace and distance though, I suffered a hip injury from shoveling snow. Running was again put on hold. It was the second time for this injury, but once more, full healing has been elusive. Now and then I feel a sharp pain right on the hip bone as a reminder that it's still not resolved. I've taken to bike riding as a replacement for running, an alternative way to get my cardio workout. The pain has subsided, but I'm not sure it's truly healed. I'm considering a visit to the orthopedist again to explore some ways to treat this pain. My own research leads me to believe it could be tendonitis.

Asian cultures talk about an "obstacle year", which usually happens around the age of 60. I feel like I'm about halfway through an obstacle decade. Just last month I bruised some ribs in a fall off my bike. I'm almost recovered from it. It's normal to expect some issues as one ages, but I'm really hoping the prostrations can mitigate the severity of anything that arises in the near future. I'm not ready to give up an active lifestyle just yet.

New Fiction: Allegheny

Two friends. One struggles for her life, the other struggles to keep her identity. All taking place at the edge of a land that still keeps many of its secrets.

My new short story up at Red Fez. Please check it out when you get a chance and help support indie publishers. Thanks!

https://www.redfez.net/fiction/identity-allegheny-991

Industrial Sunset

Sunset, West Twenty-third Street,1906

An evocative rooftop scene by painter John Sloan from 1906. I love the depiction of the ordinary from long ago. Only in the mundane details do we really get a sense of a particular time. The light and weather weren't so different. The people were the same--only the styles were different. Clothes and hair. Their height, since they were generally shorter back then owing to a lack of access to nutritious foods. The sunset above looks familiar, but the woman in the foreground, the laundry on the line, and the traffic lights below all present an alien profile. The smudges Sloan brushed in the sky speak to the omnipresent level of pollution back during the raging infancy of the industrial age.

I can imagine the smells. That same pollution. An abundance of manure due to the prevalence of horses. Automobiles were not yet dominant. And the saltier odors from humans too. Hygiene wasn't as rigorously observed as it is now. If I could travel to that time and place in the picture, my first thought would be incredulity at my presence where it shouldn't be. My second thought would be, I'm going to die. By today's standards, medical technology was grievously primitive. Tuberculosis was a relentless killer. Break the skin and infection was soon to follow. Life expectancy for a male in that year was a mere 47 years, just a few years more for a woman. The very air surrounding you was a lethal, slavering beast.

New Story to be Published In Fall 2020 in Excalibur 2020

This has been pushed ahead to the fall due Covid and the Olympics being postponed.

Life has been discovered on Mars, and humanity's relationship with it grows to be far closer than they ever could've predicted.

Follow a Japanese couple as they try to cope with with life on a troubled, near-future earth when they unexpectedly lose this relationship.

My newest story, "The God Symbiote," will be published in the fall in Excalibur 2020 Anthology. Please check out their Patreon page and, if you're inclined, help support their mission to bring new sci-fi and fantasy stories to the world.

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The Trip to Washington DC

In August, I took my first trip to Washington DC. It was my first thought after getting home last year from a great visit to Gettysburg PA. "Where should I go next year?" The choice of Washington DC was made easier by the fact that it's a direct flight from our overlooked, medium-sized town. Easy to get to from here. I'd always wanted to go. I've talked to many who visited before, and often it was their senior trip in high school. My class went to the Poconos. I sat out that trip--my protest vote.

View from the Lincoln Memorial steps

Never have I heard more of a variety of languages and accents than in DC. There was a group of students from France (probably middle school age) passing on the left. There was a group from Sweden going the opposite direction. There was a family that spoke what sounded like an eastern European language. There were a few people with an African cadence. The Middle East. Asia. The multiplicity was dizzying. It gave me hope that, even though we have a brain-dead autocrat in office, the rest of the world still looks to the US as an ideal. I've known this, but never experienced it around myself in such a tangible fashion.

I saw most of the major monuments. I lingered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, trying to conjure up that day in 1963 when Dr. King spoke. It felt like I was on America's front step. People sat on the steps and milled in front, quietly taking it all in. There were signs that

asked for quiet as a sign of respect for the monuments. They were largely heeded. The view from the steps, across the reflecting pool through the World War II monument and on to the Washington Monument, can't help but inspire. The sordid part of this country's history is never far from my mind, but that spot made it recede for a little while. Here we were, ready once again to rise above it, like we did in 2008. Or will we? The racist and nationalist strains in American life are never far from the surface.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (notice: "Veterans", not "War") has always been transgressive as far as memorials go. There were the statues of three soldiers as you enter, but the main part is a black wall with the names of those who died during the long conflict. The wall descends slowly into the ground, evoking the quagmire that the war became. The names pile up as the wall lengthens and deepens towards its midsection. There were others there looking for names they knew. The earliest

year for names is 1959, the last 1975. Even I remember that last year, with the image of the Huey on the roof of the American embassy. All that time and effort, all those lives, only to end up in an ignominious bug-out from Saigon, many South Vietnamese begging to come along. Maybe things would've been different if the rationale for the war, the supposed attack in the Gulf of Tonkin on two destroyers, had never been invented in the first place.

SS-20 on the left; Minuteman on the right

I suffered museum fatigue by the end of the trip. There are so many. The two highlights were the Air and Space Museum, and the Museum of Natural History. The instantly recognizable icons of the early days of aviation, and the space race. A replica of the lunar lander greets you as you walk in, the actual lander still sitting forlornly on the moon. Its body insect-like and partly covered in gold-colored insulation. When cast mentally against the vast cold vacuum of space, it looks almost inadequate. Yet it succeeded. There are ICBMs, both US and Russian. There are the German vengeance weapons from World War II, the V-1 and V-2. The V-1 is small, basically an early drone, but one can draw a direct line between the V-2 and the later US Minuteman ICBM. Too much was learned from the losers in that war. Werner Von Braun, the German rocket designer responsible for Hitler's terror weapons, has his

V-2 rocket

fingerprints on both weapons.

I saw the dinosaurs in the Museum of Natural History. Tyrannosaurus Rex bathed in a lurid red glow. Stegosaurus and Triceratops and Diplodocus, all were once part of my plastic playset. Here were the actual bones, proof positive that these megafauna really did roam the same lands we now walk. For all their fearsome reputation, it only took one asteroid to wipe them out and open the way for mammals. No one at the exhibits seemed to be thinking that the same cataclysmic event could happen to us. Despite our big brains, we are not favored. In fact, because of our big brains, we stand an arguably better chance of doing ourselves in. Who needs an asteroid when you've got rampant consumption of fossil fuels, the product of ancient decomposing plant matter? Thanks to us, the Cretaceous period may have the last laugh yet.

So...What's Next?

I took much of August off as far as writing goes. Finished the most recent story in early July. Seemed like a good time to think about another attempt at a novel. I have a brief outline written that feels good. There's a lot of detail to fill in, but I don't think I need to wait for that. My instinct is to start and see how it goes.

It will be a challenge. I have four (maybe five) failed attempts behind me. But with some publishing success, the chances of completing a draft have to be better. My last attempt was begun about 16 years ago, and I'm a better writer now. That should count for something.

Still, it's a very different beast from a short story. Short fiction has suited my limited free time, but a novel will eat much of that up. It's much easier to sit down to a short tale after a full day of work rather than a long-form narrative, where every so often you must find the thread in order to continue. That means re-reading from a certain point in the story, or even from the beginning.

Time has become precious again. At my age, I feel the pressing need to start this next attempt. If it crashes and burns, there's always another try. But my determination to make this one work is strong. Hopefully, it's enough.

Time Machine

Biking is my surrogate for running, ruled out by a calf muscle which refuses to heal, but it's also my time machine.

On the bike, I can outrun the years, slip back into being 15 again, the last time I rode regularly, and show the world and myself that I'm foolishly defying many of the conditions of being in my fifties. The good years are dwindling fast, so gliding along on the bike makes me feel like I'm outside of the relentless march of time. That maybe I'm stealing some of my youth back.