The Unspoken Vows, 59th Day of Childwinter,526 M.E. (Electra): If you're 22 or younger, you've never lived in a time when the United States wasn't in some intractable war or another in the Middle East. Your whole life. War. The Middle East.

I'm truly sorry. I hope you find peace in your lifetime. 

Last night, the Stable Genius launched a bombing campaign against Iran, an unauthorized act of war and the very kind of action he campaigned against in 2024. His team of cracker-jack negotiators, i.e., his son-in-law and a real-estate partner, couldn't complete a treaty (or as he puts it, "a deal") with the Iranians fast enough to distract from the Epstein affair, so he turned his black-out drunk Secretary of Defense loose on a sovereign nation. The first military act, reportedly, was bombing a school for girls, because if that isn't a strategic target, what is?

"Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls.” - Cersei Lannister  

The war, without congressional authorization, approval, or even notification, is obviously illegal, although to my thinking, no war is moral or justified. Today, Israel announced that the bombing has killed Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been in power for over 35 years.

I am no fan of Iran's or of Khamenei, but if we've learned anything in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, it's that taking out authoritarians without a clear and imminent successor in place creates a dangerous power vacuum. Despite his title, the Ayatollah was "Supreme Leader" in name only - I understand that the Revolutionary Guard really runs the country, and with Khamenei gone, I expect various generals to start competing for dominance. Warlords and regional leaders will try to seize power, and terrorist organizations like ISIS will be able to flourish in the chaos.

The Stable Genius' reckless actions will have long karmic consequences and the whole world will pay a stiff price for many years to come.

War never changes. The details are trivial and pointless, the reasons area always purely human ones. The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire based on its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower. But war, war never changes. 

 

Broom Day, 58th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Crazy pants weather. I walked today, a 7.9-mile Jackson, comfortably dressed in light sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Two days ago, I had to wear jeans and two layers of fleece, and four days ago, it was too cold to even go outside and walk.

The high temperature today was 66° F, but four days ago the high only reached 40° and the low was all the way down to 28°. There's still 15 more days left of Childwinter, but Spring keeps giving us these tantalizing little previews even as Hagwinter refuses to loosen her grip.

My life these days alternates between walking days, when I try to get in five to ten miles per hike, and sitting days, when I meditate for 90 minutes. Since there are biggest things going on in my life right now, I hyper-attuned to the weather.    

 

 

The Crippled Vision, 57th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): Of all the Venn diagrams, the overlap that I like the least is that of politics and sports.  

My twin football allegiances are to the New England Patriots (pro) and the Georgia Bulldogs (collegiate). I've been a fan of both teams, through years thick and thin, since the early 1980s. Meanwhile, my politics include a complete and total contempt for the Stable Genius. In my mind, there is no overlap, no Venn diagram, between my football enthusiasms and my politics.

The Stable Genius wanted to buy the Patriots back in 1988, and I was glad back then that his attempt failed, even before I knew anything about his deplorable racism and political views. Back then, he was the guy who lured the Georgia Bulldogs' Herschel Walker away from the NFL, and I hadn't forgiven him for that (still haven't). I didn't want his greedy hands anywhere near my Patriots and was relieved when they were purchased instead by businessman Victor Kian. 

Kian was the owner of the Remington electric shaver company and famous for the tv ads in which he claimed he liked the razor so much that he bought the company. I don't remember if he ever said the same thing about the Patriots, but it feels like he should have. In any event, the subsequent owner fter Kian, Robert Kraft, was a close, personal friend of the Stable Genius. QB Tom Brady and Head Coach Bill Belichick also had ties to the Stable Genius. But those friendships and ties weren't playing on the field and had no relationship with the Patriots' success or my feelings about the team. I don't care that Kraft donated to the Stable Genius' inauguration fund, or that Tom Brady had a MAGA hat in his locker. All that had nothing to do with my cheering for the team. There was zero overlap of sports and politics.

I moved to Atlanta in 1980, the same year the Georgia Bulldogs won the college football national championship, and got caught up in the frenzy and jumped on board the Bulldogs' bandwagon. Georgia is a red state and some associate the team with the conservative values of the fans (it wasn't unusual to see Confederate flags in the stands), but I cheered for them because of their play and the athleticism of their players, not because of the politics of their fans.

Oh, but those were simpler times. Today, it seems like nothing can't be seen through except through a political filter, including sports, including the Georgia Bulldogs. Last week, the Stable Genius, his approval ratings tanking and his unpopularity at an all-time high, held a rally in Rome, Georgia, and had both Herschel and current Georgia QB Gunner Stockton on stage with him. Apparently, he was hoping for some popularity by association. Maybe he was cynically manipulating the star players, but Stockton went on to describe the meeting as "an awesome experience" and didn't object when the Stable Genius said the football star was a big fan of the President.

To be honest, I never gave a lot of thought to Gunner Stockton's politics. He's from a small, rural town in northeast Georgia, one of the reddest areas of a red state, so it's no shocker that he's a conservative. I probably would have guessed that if asked. 

The Stable Genius called Stockton a "big star" and predicted a "big year" for him. He told the crowd that Stockton is a "great quarterback" who is "only going to get better." I totally agree, but since it was the Stable Genius who said it, cheering for Stockton and the Dawgs is now viewed by many as approval or even endorsement of the Stable Genius. He's opportunistically hitched himself to the Bulldogs' bandwagon, hoping some of the Bulldogs' popularity rubs off on him. The Venn circles have shifted, and now sports and politics overlap. 

But you know what? I still like Gunner Stockton as a QB and I'm still going to cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs. I don't care who Gunner supports politically as long as he can still complete passes and scramble for clutch first downs. I'm not going to let the Stable Genius deprive me of my Dawgs, even if he did deprive the nation from getting to see Herschel Walker play in the NFL in his prime.

And you know what? I'm still going to eat those tasty Chick-Fil-A sandwiches despite the regressive views of its owner. If I can get a better deal on something at Home Depot, I'm shopping there. But I'm not shopping at Hobby Lobby. That's where I'm drawing the line because fuck those guys and besides, I've never once in my life found myself in the market for glitter paint, crepe paper, or glue sticks.

Finally, though, I wonder how the Stable Genius' praise of Gunner and the Bulldogs is going down over in Alabama. He previously was a big Crimson Tide fan, attending Crimson Tide home games and predicting last year that the team would "go all the way" in the college football playoffs. Does he know how much mutual animosity there is between the Bulldogs and the Tide? It's like Zohran Mamdani endorsing the Boston Red Sox. And if the Stable Genius tries to play both sides and praises Alabama next year, whatever good will he generated for himself with Stockton will not only disappear, but turn into anger, just as any karma he had accrued in Alabama is probably already gone. 

tl/dr: There's nothing the Stable Genius can't fuck up.

Body of Love, 56th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): I have a question about the news. Why must it be delivered to us by big corporations? Print media, television, etc. - all the news outlets are owned by mega-corporations with profit margins, growth goals, and an understandable desire to minimize loss and liabilities. 

Follow-up question: what role (positive role, that is) do those billionaire owners have in the delivery of news to the public? Just what exactly, on a more-or-less daily basis, does Jeff Bezos do at the Washington Post?

Obviously, these billionaire owners want to imprint their own personal world views on the news that's delivered to us, and as the mega-conglomerates get larger and larger, we get fewer and fewer owners and fewer and fewer points of view.

Worse, the corporations own other companies and to meet their growth goals, they have to acquire still more companies, to the point that they've gotten so big and monopolistic that further mergers require government approval and waivers of anti-trust laws, so the billionaire owners kowtow to the government and self-censor to curry favor. Instead of holding the rich and powerful accountable, they end up being mouthpieces and propagandists for the powerful due to late-stage capitalism.

There are some independent journalists out there that bravely operate on low-cost to free platforms, like Substack and other social media. But each independent can only cover one or two news stories a day, and a full understanding of current events requires following a number of issues simultaneously for context, including politics, both national and local, economics, culture, and climate. As much as I can appreciate one writer's nuanced view on the situation in Gaza, for instance, and another's on warming trends in the Arctic, it's exhausting to endlessly search through social media for a full contextual understanding of all those events. 

Interdependence: What's happening in Gaza has a bearing on what's happening in Ukraine, which has a bearing on the Chinese intentions toward Taiwan, which will affect the production and cost of microchips and development of AI, which affects energy and climate change, which causes extreme weather events and could result in the cancellation of a game in the World Series. 

But I get it (I think) - it's expensive to operate a studio, even if you're "broadcasting" only on YouTube, there are costs in assembling and publishing an on-line  newspaper, and top writing and reporting talent understandably doesn't want to work for free or for life-of-poverty wages. Enter the big corporations and their built-in biases.    

If you're waiting on me to reveal the answer, sorry, I don't have one. The situation sucks. The government could step in Teddy Roosevelt-style, all rough-riding and trust-busting, and break up the news outlets and media companies the way they broke up Ma Bell, but since they've now got the media behaving the way they like, the government has little motivation to change the status quo. Someone else will have to take the lead.

Oprah? If she's reading this, a weary nation needs her help right now.

 

The Unrecovered Ocean, 55th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): The Ocean giveth and the Ocean taketh away. Today, I learned that French electronic and new-music composer Éliane Radigue has passed away at age 94. Impermanence is swift. 

An early collaborator in the field of musique concrète, Radigue carved a singular path with unparalleled vision. She pursued an exciting musical life, moving from electroacoustic feedback to electronic music with the help of her ARP 2500 synthesizer, and finally reinventing herself through fruitful acoustic collaborations with numerous instrumentalists, most notably through the Occam Ocean and related series. I posted many of her Occam compositions here on Universal Solar Calendar Ocean days  

In 2019, Nate Wooley performed an Occam composed specifically for him at Knoxville's Big Ears festival. 

A practicing Tibetan Buddhist, she spent three years under her guidance of her teacher, Tsuglak Mawe Wangchuk. Returning to composition, she completed Songs of Milarepa and Jetsun Mila. about Tibetan patriarchs. Since 2011, her Occam series consisted of acoustic compositions written for specific musicians, including but not limited to, Occam I through XXVII, Occam River I through XXVIII, Ocean Delta I through XIX, and Occam Hexa I through V.

Here's a video about Occam Ocean XXV. If the music sounds like one long note played endlessly (the full piece is nearly 45 minutes), you're right. But just as you never enter the same river twice, deep listening reveals subtle but surprising variations in harmonics and reverberation. In addition to a remarkably disciplined performance by organist Frédéric Blondy, it's but one of many remarkable compositions by Radigue.  

 

The White Spheres, 54th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): It's no bomb cyclone here like the Northeast is suffering through, but it's damn cold again down here in the South. Another disruption of the increasingly unreliable Polar Vortex is underway and sending cold Arctic air far down across the country all the way to the Guld of Mexico.  

In addition, the La Niña conditions have ended and we'll be going into a El Niño later this spring and summer. The neutral pattern we're in right now between the two extremes nearly always bring colder than average temperatures, or so I'm told. El Niños also weaken trade winds, alter global weather patterns, and often bring increased rainfall to the southern U.S., so we can look forward to a soggy, humid summer.

I really want to blame the weather on the Stable Genius, but can't figure out how. 

 

The Supernatural Bride, 53rd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): Comic actor Dana Gould recently noted, "Thinking about Rush Limbaugh and how, now that he's dead, you never, ever hear about him. No one mentions anything he did, because what he did had no value. It contributed nothing worthwhile to the culture. Nothing of lasting value. He just made anger. Every day. Rising, blooming and fading like a fart. Then he died and was instantly replaced by a fleet of little replicas, farting fake fury five days a week. Creating nothing of interest or artistic value to anyone. Seriously, what an awful way to make a living."

I couldn't agree more. There's no "Limbaugh philosophy," no "Limbaugh teachings," not even a "Limbaugh style." He just spewed vitriol into the atmosphere to inflame the minds of angry listeners, who simply turned to their next source of invective, their next opiate, after Rush was gone.

Even beyond the fleet of little replicas to which Gould refers, we now have the millions of little comment bots relentlessly monitoring social media to post hateful words and comments on any post deemed outside the narrowest of MAGA world views. Adding nothing of value, nothing worthwhile, just hate. The mayor of Boston, Massachusetts posted the most anodyne of congratulations to the USA's men's hockey team for winning the Gold Medal in the Olympics today, and I saw nothing but smarmy, mean-girl comments making fun of her and her ethnicity, and complaining about taxation. They've been calling the state "Taxachusetts" since at least the 1970s, and the name is so well established that even spell check accepts the word "Taxachusetts" without corrections, but sure, there were no taxes in Boston until Michelle Wu came along.

Fun historical fact, speaking of Boston and taxes and all: the Boston Tea Party wasn't a protest over taxes as is commonly assumed. It was actually more a protest about government-sanctioned monopolies. American colonials didn't have a vote for members of the British Parliament and therefore couldn't be taxed (taxation without representation), so the government-controlled East India Company would instead ship all their tea from the Far East directly to England where it was taxed, and then would ship the tea from England over to the Americas. The colonists, frugal as they were, preferred to buy their tea at cheaper prices from the Dutch instead. However, the British government decided that the East India Company deserved a little more profit, and issued a ban on Dutch tea imports to the British colonies, forcing them to buy the more expensive and highly taxed tea from the British instead. The colonists were incensed about losing freedom to choose from whom to buy tea, rebelled, and stormed an East India Company vessel in Boston Harbor and dumped the tea overboard. 

It wasn't until four score and seven or so years later, during the Reconstruction of the Confederacy, that the event was called the "Boston Tea Party" and used as an argument that opposition to taxes was a sacred American tradition. Previously, the protest had been known by uncatchy terms like "The Destruction of the Tea." But southerners opposed to their tax money being spent on Black schools and social programs for the formerly enslaved started a protest movement not against the specific programs they detested, but over the very principal of taxation in general, and mythologized The Destruction of the Tea into an anti-taxation Boston Tea Party.

Same shit happens today. When Democrats are in power and money is spent of social welfare and fighting inequality, "taxpayer unions" and teabaggers emerge protesting not those programs (that would be racist), but protesting the general concept of taxation. But when Republicans control the government, taxes are still collected but the taxpayer unions and teabaggers are strangely quiet.  

It's cold again. Thursday, I was outside taking my alternating-day walk in a tee-shirt and shorts in 70° F weather, and today the temperature is falling below freezing, with wind-chill temperatures down to 12° overnight. Apparently, the polar vortex winds have broken down again, allowing arctic air to spill south, and while the Northeastern U.S. is getting pummeled by a nor'easter and heavy snow, we down here in the former Confederate States are suffering sub-freezing temperatures and blustery, 10-20 mph winds with gusts up to 35.  

To summarize, I never liked Rush, I'm excited that the USA beat Canada in Olympic hockey (even if I didn't quite say so above), and I provided an unrequested history lesson and bitched about the cold weather. Any questions?

Invisible Half Man, 52nd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Speaking on Stephen Colbert's The Late Show, author Michael Pollen reminded me of something interesting. Brains, he pointed out, evolved to support bodies; bodies aren't a life-support system for brains. The brain controls our body's breathing and heartbeat, regulates various metabolic processes, and keeps us aware of various external threats and dangers. 

Going back to the age-old body-mind schism, people conventionally think that "they" are the mind, and hence their identity is somewhere in the brain. We exist somewhere inside our skulls, it's thought, peering out at the external world through the eye sockets. For centuries, science fiction and horror novels have obsessed on the idea of disembodied heads, brains kept alive in laboratories, and consciousness transferred to computers. But if the brain is merely a support organ for the survival of the body, and if personality, memory, and intellect are all but byproducts of that one particular organ, if we wanted to live forever, shouldn't we preserves the body below the neck instead of the head above?    

Body and mind are not two separate things. The brain is simply another organ, no different than the heart, lungs, stomach, and gall bladder. The latter excretes bile for some reason (I don't remember why) and the brain excretes thoughts and stores memories. Personality, intellect, and consciousness are all after effects of the brain's functions. "You" are your body, including the brain and everything that goes with it. "You" are as much your toenails as your awareness.     

All things are liberated and without fixed abode. When we think of water, we visualize it as flowing in rivers, pooled in lakes, and rolling in the waves of the great oceans. Of course, water takes many forms and flows over the earth and through the sky; it flows upward and it flows downward. It flows in a single winding brook, and it flows in the ocean depths. It rises up to form clouds, and it comes down to form pools. 

The way of water is to ascend to the sky, forming rain and dew, and to descend to the earth, forming rivers and lakes. There's nowhere on Earth that water doesn't reach - it reaches into flames and it reaches into rocks. If you look up the chemical composition of most minerals, you'll see H₂O somewhere in the formula. Our bodies are mostly water, and our brain is primarily made of water. We're basically skin-bags of water walking around and building things. Water reaches into the mind and its images, into wit, and into discrimination, and it reaches into the realization that we're just very clever forms of water.

Back on the 50th day of Childwinter, I noted that the warm weather meant that there's a lot of moisture in the unstable atmosphere, which portends thunder and storms. The thunder woke me up last night (water awakening water), and this morning I finally got out up of bed after a particularly loud thunderclap. It rained all morning, but despite the thunder, I'd hardly call the rainfall a "storm" - it fell reasonably gently, if persistently, and didn't try to take any trees down with it. It's let up now, and since today is a walking day, this skin-bag of water is heading out shortly to get in some mileage, more water flowing over the Earth.    

 

Day of Footfall, 51st of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): "Where can the horizon lie when a nation hides its organic minds in a cellar, dark and grim?" - Oprah, I guess

I'm not going to write about today's Supreme Court decision striking down the Stable Genius' idiotic tariffs. It's all over the media, others who know more about economics than I are posting far better, more informed political and macroeconomic analysis, and it's all but just another headline in the constant shitstorm of this second SG presidency. We'll have a whole other set of headlines tomorrow.

I'm not writing about the Court or the tariffs, so what will I write about? . . . I don't know . . . Nothing else comes to mind. Maybe I'll just shut the fuck up and wish you a happy Friday.

Happy Friday. The tariffs are dead. Enjoy your weekend.   

 

Speech in the Glade, 50th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): It was an extraordinarily pleasant 75° F today. Due to a late start, I only got in a 5.8-mile Quincy, a short distance given the weather, but wearing a t-shirt and shorts. 

Other than today, however, this has been an unusually cold Childwinter, as was the Hagwinter before it. I've seen lower temperatures in Atlanta before, but the lows this season were nearly as cold and have lasted far, far longer than in years past.

While I'm thrilled to see the warmth return, I also know from past experience that when the air gets this warm this early in the season, the air mass become unstable and we get severe thunderstorms and even tornados. Too much moisture in the air in too close proximity to adjacent cold-air masses, and, well, you do the science. 

The global climate is nearing so many tipping points, and it's probably crossed many already, even without the Stable Genius' recent recission of the Endangerment Finding (or the "Engagement Rule" as Bill Maher called it). Several environmental groups have already sued to challenge the recission, and they might even win, but we were still well on the path toward climate collapse and its consequences. 

We're going to be facing a decade of increased hurricanes, severe thunderstorms, and tornados, along with alternating periods of drought and flooding. The remaining trees around my house, that is, the ones that haven't already fallen or I had taken down, are healthy, but I may have to take them all down. There's still way too many tons of timber way too high over my head and home for me to be comfortable with knowing the weather that's coming.        

 

Lessening Heart Hums, 49th Day of Childwinter,  526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Knowledge is raw data. Intelligence is knowing how to parse and sort that raw data. Wisdom is understanding what to do with the parsed and sorted raw data. 

Ignorance is not knowing. Knowledge can exist in ignorance, but not intelligence and even less so wisdom.

The bell looks like a mouth, gaping,

Indifferent to the wind blowing in the four directions;

If you ask it about the meaning of wisdom,

It only answers with a jingling, tinkling sound.

- Rújìng (1163-1228 C.E.), Chinese monk who taught and gave dharma transmission to Sōtō Zen founder Eihei Dōgen 

 

Third Ocean, 48th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): Atlanta's Cop City is one of the largest militarized police training centers in the United States. The site includes military-grade training facilities, a mock city in which to practice urban warfare, and dozens of shooting ranges. Construction of the site cleared much of the Weelaunee Forest, Atlanta’s largest green space. 

Back in 2023, I signed a petition to stop Cop City. Some people scoff at opposition to the facility, saying it's important to train the police, and while I agree to that in principle, the training the police need is not in urban warfare but in de-escalation techniques and community awareness, classroom lessons you don't need a mock city to teach. They need hands-on leadership and an on-the-street mentoring  program. 

Further, building the site in a majority Black neighborhood that understandably didn't want it in their backyards reeks of racism, and it's well documented that it's the Black community that disproportionally suffers police brutality and over-zealous enforcement. I'm sure the sounds of gunfire from the shooting ranges and sirens and noise from helicopters, flashbangs, etc. have hurt the already depressed property values in the neighborhood. Would you want to live next to it?    

There's a lot of underutilized space in the City of Atlanta for a training facility, including abandoned shopping malls and environmental brownfields, and it seems preposterous that the only site considered was the city's largest remaining green space. Also, what about the old training ground? Why not rebuild there? And if it's so unusable, why should we turn the forest land over to such irresponsible stewards of property? 

If all that doesn't trigger alarms in your head, look at the absolutely vicious response to protests by the city. They literally murdered one protester while still in his tent (descanse en paz, Tortuguita), and prosecuted others as domestic terrorists and charged them with racketeering under the RICO Act. They even went after organizations offering legal aid and bail assistance. A judge eventually overturned the case, but both the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia have vowed to keep persecuting the opposition and refile the charges, even though construction of Cop City is now complete. 

The petition opposing Cop City requested a referendum on the development be put on the ballot for voters to decide. The petition eventually gathered more than 116,000 signatures, nearly double the number required by the city to put a referendum on the ballot. It’s also more than the number of people who had voted in Atlanta’s previous mayoral election.   

The City engaged in a series of legal shenanigans to ignore the petition and the will of the people. They  announced that would use a burdensome signature verification process regarded by many as a tactic of voter suppression to disenfranchise Black, Brown, and low-income people. Many of the city’s leaders had argued against such verification requirements in a lawsuit over the 2018 election. 

Finally, the city simply refused to even count the signatures on the petition or otherwise acknowledge its existence. When the petition was presented at the city clerk’s office on September 11, 2023, city officials falsely claimed they couldn’t begin verifying signatures because a deadline had been missed, even though a federal court had extended the deadline to late in the month. 

According to recent reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a former municipal clerk was hired in 2023 to help with the signature verification process. The signatures were never counted, but the city still paid the former clerk $910,000 anyway. Nearly one million dollars to not verify or count signatures. Nice work if you can get it. 

The whole case stinks to high heavens. Murder, trumped-up charges against the protesters, persecution of those assisting the protesters, and illegally disregarding a valid petition, not even allowing a vote on the matter. And now we learn there's also what appears to be graft. This whole thing stinks and that's why I voted against incumbent Mayor Andre Dickens last November.

Stop Cop City!

 

The Painted Timbers, 47th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): They're all saying the same thing, aren't they? "Go to a place that's neither hot nor cold." "Do not stay where buddha exists and run quickly from where no-buddha exists." Same thing. I was taught in the Soto Zen tradition and didn't do koan practice, but it seems to me that once you've solved one koan, you've essentially completed them all.

Here's a koan for you: Since the future is very much uncertain and we cannot foresee what will happen next, how should we live this day today? 

These awful times we live in. Today's headlines: Critics accuse administration of cooking the books in claims of cost savings from climate finding reversal. Vaccine makers curtail research and cut jobs amid hostile policies. Shooting at Rhode Island ice rink leaves at least two people dead. US teen who pushed for her father’s release from ICE custody dies of cancer. Producer of Israeli spy thriller found dead in Athens hotel room. Russian dissident Alexi Navalny poisoned by frog toxin, postmortem shows.  Actor Robert Duvall dead at age 95. Documentary film-maker Frederick Wiseman dead at age 96. 

As tennis player Coco Gauff recently put it, "I don’t think people should be dying in the streets just for existing." I agree. 

Life-and-death is the great matter and impermanence is swift. Our life changes moment by moment and it flows by swiftly every day. This is the reality before our eyes. In every moment, do not expect tomorrow will come. 

 

Descent of the Host, 46th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): A monk once asked Zen Master Jōshū, "What is a true statement?" Jōshū replied, "Your mother is ugly."

Is there any surprise that Jōshū (778-897 CE) is one of my favorite Zen Masters? 

When a monk once bid him farewell, Jōshū asked, "Where are you going?" The monk replied, "I'm going to visit various places to learn the buddha-dharma."

Jōshū advised him, "Do not stay where buddha exists and run quickly from where no-buddha exists." The monk replied, "In that case, when you put it like that, I'll stay right here."

Jōshū was trying to get the monk to realize that the Way is not to be found far or near, within or without. To search for it is to miss it. Jōshū had learned this when he asked his teacher, Nansen, “What is the Way?” and Nansen famously answered, “Ordinary mind is the Way.” 

Jōshū asked, “Should I seek after it or not?” and Nansen answered, “If you try to turn toward it, you go against it.” 

“The Way does not belong to knowing or not knowing," Nansen explained. "Knowing is delusion. Not knowing is blank consciousness. When you have truly reached the Way beyond all doubt you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong?” 

Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253 CE) said, "Just cast aside body and mind and practice without desire either to realize the Way or to attain the dharma. Then you can be called an undefiled practioner." John Daido Loori (1931-2007) said, "If you seek it from others, you go astray. If you seek it from within, you are far removed from it."   

Today was a walking day, but I barely got in half a Washington because of the rain. Tomorrow is a sitting day, and only the weather in my own mind can deter me then. The forecast, as always, is foggy. 

 

Day of the Inn Dweller, 45th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): The things I do for you. Today, I completed my review of the EPA's regulatory impact analysis titled, Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act. Don't expect it to appear of a bestseller list any time soon.

The February 2026 report (EPA-420-R-26-002) was prepared by the EPA, as in "Environmental Protection," but you'd hardly know it by the report. Instead of attempting to refute the science behind the effect of CO₂ emissions on climate, either technically or even by simply saying, "we disagree," the so-called "regulatory impact analysis" only considers the economics of the decision to repeal the Endangerment Finding (or as Bill Mahar hilariously mispronounced it last night, the "Engagement Rule"). In short, if you don't want to read the 35-page document, it basically concludes that since U.S. consumers don't buy as many electric vehicles as other types of automobile, repealing the Endangerment Finding and its associated regulations will give buyers more "consumer choice" and lower costs for cars without emission restrictions. 

Amazingly, the Environmental Protection Agency didn't consider the protection of the environment in their decision. The word "environment" only appears once in the entire document when not used as part of the agency's name, or in footnotes referring to other organizations or the titles of other reports and documents. Similarly, the word "climate" only appears three times, and one of those is merely a reference to something called the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University, and another is a footnote reference to the same institute. 

The third and final use of the word "climate" comes in a sentence on page 5, stating that a model for automobile production and pricing decisions should "capture how consumers make vehicle purchase and driving decisions to maximize their welfare based on their preferences for vehicle attributes (e.g., efficiency, size, speed, reliability) and travel, new and used vehicle prices, and fuel price expectations, subject to their budget constraints and any location constraints (e.g., climate, commuting options, access to fueling infrastructure, etc)." Climate, as considered here, merely considers if a consumer lives in a warm or cold region, and could easily be replaced by the term "temperature zone."

No, the report is a complete and startling abandonment of the agency's responsibility not only to protect the environment but to even consider the environment. It's an absolute dereliction of duty. The analysis simply justifies rescinding the Endangerment Finding because consumers seem to prefer gasoline-powered vehicles, and because automobiles will be cheaper without emission controls than with them. In short, it's the sort of report one might expect to see from an automobile-manufacturer trade group or the oil-and-gas lobby, but not from the EPA.      

Lee Zeldin, the Long Island hack with no prior environmental experience named by the Stable Genius to head the EPA, stated a year ago that the agency's new mission is to focus not on environmental protection but on fostering economic growth, energy independence, and auto-industry expansion by prioritizing the rollback of Biden-era climate rules and cutting costs for consumers. In announcing the rescission, Zeldin said he was "driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” 

EPA's rescission of the Endangerment Finding without consideration of effect on the climate or the environment is exactly the kind of reckless and idiotic actions this godawful administration has inflicted on the citizens of these United States.

The Invading Past, 44th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Climatologist Katharine Hayhoe points out that U.S. carbon emissions are ticking up as the Stable Genius doubles down on coal and other fossil fuels and blocks new wind and solar projects. But China’s emissions, on the other hand, appear to have peaked and may now be starting to actually decline. 

Last year, China installed a full half of all the world's new wind and solar energy, and over the past two years China installed more new solar power each year than the U.S. has installed in total across its entire history. China's clean energy exports alone are cutting CO₂ outside its borders by 1% year after year.

China is apparently looking at solar and wind energy as a cheap (free) source of energy that has the added benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enriches innovators and tech leaders. The Stable Genius looks at solar and wind energy and doesn't see an opportunity to enrich the oil and coal tycoons who donated to his campaign, so instead doubles down on U.S. reliance on expensive and harmful fossil fuels and allows China to take the lead on technological innovation. 

As was widely reported, the Stable Genius asked oil executives in 2024 to donate $1 billion for his campaign. The request was arguable legal, but the industry had a long list of policy actions it wanted, including dismantling parts of Biden’s green agenda, rolling back regulations that threatened to crimp their profits, and specific executive orders they hoped he would sign.

Financial disclosure records show the oil and gas industry contributed at least $75 million to the campaign and affiliated PACs spent an additional $104 million on lobbying in 2025. Yesterday, when EPA nullified the Endangerment Finding, the Stable Genius provided exactly the benefits the oil companies were seeking.

Nullification of the Endangerment Finding will lead directly to the cancellation of vehicle greenhouse-gas standards. As described in an analysis by the Center for American Progress, new vehicles will consume more gallons of gas per mile than those already on the road, which will increase demand for gasoline and thus the cost per gallon. In short, U.S. drivers will need to fuel up more often and will pay higher prices per gallon when they do. The EPA's own analysis of the effects of repealing the standards concedes the nullification will increase gasoline prices.

Even more significantly, revoking the standards will worsen global climate changes, resulting in  decreased health outcomes, increased property damage from extreme weather, lost agricultural productivity, and increased energy costs. 

The financial burdens of climate change are already being felt. More frequent and severe weather events are already increasing insurance costs. The most damaging hurricanes are now three times more likely than they were in the early 1900s, and the percentage of Atlantic hurricanes that reach Category 3 strength or higher has doubled since 1980. Meanwhile, the area burned by wildfires annually in the Western U.S. has increased approximately 800 percent since 1985, with about half of the increase attributable to climate change.

Revoking the Endangerment Finding and the standards that flow from it means oil and gas companies will make more money, while U.S. households deal with higher energy prices and the costs of climate change that those companies have caused. If the Stable Genius actually wants to lower prices, then he should drop his favoritism toward the oil-and-gas industry and follow China's lead and support solutions that lower costs and raise wages for citizens.

 

Day of the Cat, 43rd of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): The front page of the EPA's website proudly announced that, at the Stable Genius' direction, the agency just took the "single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history." They did it, folks - they repealed the Endangerment Finding that ruled that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health and the environment, and thus broke the back of the U.S. climate-change regulatory framework. The announcement, written in a highly partisan and unscientific manner, reads as if it were written by the oil and gas lobby, which it probably was.

The Endangerment Finding was the legal basis that recognized greenhouse gases as a public-health threat, allowing the EPA to regulate the gases under the Clean Air Act. The finding meant that the EPA could set and enforce emissions standards and could defend their actions in court. That legal backbone shaped everything from power-sector rules to vehicle standards, and created the framework in which emissions reductions were expected. Without the finding, EPA authority is narrower, more fragmented, and far easier to challenge.

Meanwhile, as The Guardian pointed out this week, continued global warming could trigger an irreversible course of multiple climate tipping points and feedback loops, creating a hellish "hothouse Earth." In short, as ice, which reflects away much of the incoming solar heat, retreats and more of the underlying bedrock is exposed, the rock absorbs more heat and further melts the ice, which exposes more bedrock, which melts more ice, and so on and so forth in a feedback loop. A tipping point is when the system reaches a point where a feedback loop can't be avoided and may already be occurring in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Permafrost, mountain glaciers, and the Amazon rain forest appear to be on the verge to tipping, and other potential tipping points include loss of polar sea ice, retreat of sub-Arctic forests, and collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), the system of ocean currents that strongly influences global climate. 

Runaway feedback loops would lock the world into a climate far worse than the 2-3°C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would be very different than the conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilization developed.

Human activities have massively upset the global balance of greenhouse gases. The planet has some buffering capacity for carbon imbalances, but the geological cycle for carbon is on the order of millions of years. We can't put tens of millions of years worth of CO₂ into the atmosphere over the span of a few centuries and expect the planet to be able to adapt without serious consequences. There's no way that isn't going to massively upset the ecological and chemical balances we rely on to keep us and everything around us alive.

Repealing the Endangerment Finding and effectively limiting the government's ability to restrict the continued emission of CO₂ is literally the worst thing to do at this fraught moment. The EPA's justification of their move claims the Finding was "massively unpopular" (it probably was among the oil and gas lobbyists influencing the agency), and that repeal would somehow save consumers billions of dollars and give them more choice (the choice to buy big, gas-guzzling vehicles that emit tons of carbon dioxide). 

That all seems colossally short sighted. An unlivable planet with a unstable climate is even more massively unpopular, and the costs associated with hurricanes, floods, droughts, and crop losses will dwarf the money consumers may potentially save in the short term.

It's a bad day for planet Earth.

One final note on the colossal stupidity of this decision. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in an interview that repealing the finding would boost the coal industry.  “CO₂ was never a pollutant,” he declared. “The whole endangerment thing opens up the opportunity for the revival of clean, beautiful American coal.”

"Clean coal" was a catch-all term for a range of potential technologies, none of which have yet been implemented, to burn coal without emitting the carbon to the atmosphere. You know, scrubbers, closed-loop systems, and so on. But somewhere along the line, the Stable Genius heard the term "clean coal," and mistook it for a term of endearment of coal as it is without those technologies. "Good, clean coal," he says wistfully as if it were cool, running water, and now his administration knows they can call the dirty fossil fuel "clean coal" without fear of contradiction.

 

The Numb Recall, 42nd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): I spent (wasted, squandered, threw away) some five hours of my life today watching Pam Bondi testify before Congress today about the Epstein files. It's hard to imagine a more vile and nasty witness then Bondi as she responded to questions with personal insults, non sequiturs, and outright lies meant to flatter the Stable Genius. 

I recall Rachel Maddow once noting that the Stable Genius seems to like a little, let's say spice in his attorneys. Not just lawyers who will unquestioningly defend him but aggressive little weasels who will stick it a little extra hard to his opponents, who will walk away from the mildest little disagreement with blood on their hands. Hatchetmen, henchmen, backstabbers, and graverobbers. Bondi filled that role to a T today. Shrilly shouting and with her dyed blond hair and rhinoplastic nose, she was a textbook definition of white trash, the Real Housewives of Palm Beach Circuit Court. Imagine a female Kid Rock with a law degree.

Around three p.m., I couldn't take it any more, the sun had finally came out, and I went for a short, 4.5-mile Madison. I could have been doing that all along, I realized, rather than listening to her invective and lies all day. I hate these times and I can't stand the gooners, creeps, and swindlers that have taken over our government.

Christianity is Stupid Dept. (a random thought while walking): Jealousy is a most human of foibles, a psychological illness stemming from longing, clinging, and desire. Yet the Bible repeatedly describes its god as a "jealous God," a supreme being with the weakest of human weaknesses - "For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealousy, is a jealous God" (Exodus 34:14); "You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:5); "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God" (Deuteronomy 4:24).    

The Ten Commandments, which couldn't even bother to forbid slavery or racism or child abuse, still has a whole commandment forbidding "coveting," which is a form of jealousy. The "jealous God" forbids his creations from jealousy, but otherwise encourages them to act like him. Just not that. At least with regard to thy neighbor's house, wife, and livestock. 

The jealous God also has another commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me." Who are these other gods of which the jealous God is jealous? I thought the Bible taught there was only one god - nowhere does it mention other gods. Is he jealous of imaginary gods? 

The Buddha taught that our suffering is caused by clinging and desire. Jealousy is considered a particularly toxic form of clinging, causes suffering to both the person and the object of jealousy, and leads to delusion. The Christian God is obviously suffering, as manifest by his jealousy and delusion that there are other gods, and as a result his followers suffer as much as any abused spouse of a jealous partner.

 

The Infant Footprint, 41st Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): Well, now I know that the FBI's seizure of my 2020 election ballot was initiated by a Kurt Olsen, the Stable Genius' Director of Election Security and Integrity and a leading election denier in the administration. The search warrant relied heavily on claims about the Fulton County ballots that have been widely debunked. An affidavit on which the search warrant was based referenced several debunked conspiracy theories including arguments about fraudulent and duplicate absentee ballots, election machine tabulator tapes, and missing ballot images.

However, there was no allegation of a foreign interference in the election, which makes it all the more unusual that Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, was present when they seized my ballot. Her agency’s role in elections extends only to foreign interference, but the Stable Genius reportedly told her to investigate the 2020 vote. “You go do that," he told her. "You get it done.” The day after the search, she arranged a call with FBI agents in which the Stable Genius praised them and thanked them for their service.

Last week, the Stable Genius called for the Republican Party to “nationalize” elections. He also said that “the federal government should get involved” in elections, and cited a list of cities in which he claimed there was voter fraud in 2020. “Take a look at Detroit,” he said. “Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta.” There is no evidence of widespread fraud in any of those places but his words remind me of The Talking Heads' Life During Wartime: "Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?"

I'm waiting for his goons to show up on my doorstep to ask me to confirm that my mail-in ballot was really mine. "Are you aware that someone submitted a ballot with your name voting for Joe Biden?," they'll ask. "You did mean to vote for the Stable Genius, didn't you?," the armed goons will ask. 

Fascism is here, boys and girls. This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.

 

Day of the Mists, 40th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): "Love is a beach, there is no shore to its opening." - Bad Bunny

 

The White Sun, 39th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): It's one thing to live in "interesting" times and another to live in "exciting" times. But we appear to be living in "ridiculous" times where I have to check multiple sources to ascertain that a headline isn't, in fact, from The Onion. I literally could not believe that even the Stable Genius would post a meme as blatantly racist as the notorious video he posted last week until I saw it referenced in the NY Times, The Guardian, and whatever they're calling MSNBC now, my triangulation of sources for confirming the veracity of current events.    

Not The Onion: "Rightwing Critics Blame Mamdani as New York Snow Fails to Melt" (The Guardian). Actor Debra Messing complained, “The streets are a disaster. It hasn’t snowed in 5 days and the streets still haven’t been cleared.” Michael Rapaport posted a video showing snow on a New York street, and said, “I need to know who’s responsible for the dog doo doo” (um, dogs?). The New York Post noted, “The snow is still here," and "we’ve got record cold temperatures.” Sadly, The Guardian needed to point out that the mayor has little power over the temperature of the city. 

As a point of fact, some 2,500 sanitation workers worked 12-hour shifts to remove snow and collect garbage after the storm, and the issue wasn't just the snowfall but the lingering cold. Previous mayors have also been criticized for their response to NYC snow - in 2014, Bill de Blasio was accused of neglecting the wealthy Upper East Side in favor of Brooklyn and Queens, and Michael Bloomberg faced criticism when some streets went unplowed for days following 20 inches of snow.

Separately, in not a Not-The-Onion headline, the Guardian reported that US companies are falsely blaming artificial intelligence for job losses. The unsurprising actual reasons for the layoffs include greed, i.e., maximizing profits, the effects of the Stable Genius' tariffs, and possibly over-hiring during the covids. In short, the CEOs are engaged in “AI-washing.”

In 2025, AI was cited as a reason for more than 54,000 layoffs. Amazon explained they trimmed staff because AI, "the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet," requires them to "be organized more leanly.“ Hewlett-Packard said the company will use AI to “improve customer satisfaction and boost productivity," which also requires the company to cut 6,000 people in the next years. Duolingo announced that the company will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.”

However, a January report from a market research firm notes that while companies can use AI to replace people working in call centers and technical writing, apps don't currently exist that can replace most other occupations and probably won’t anytime soon. They project that only 6% of US jobs will be automated by 2030.

The report noted that tariffs were cited as the reasons for fewer than 8,000 layoffs, a fraction of the number attributed to AI. However, there's a reluctance for companies to say anything negative about the economic impacts of the Stable Genius' policies due to fear of retribution, but by saying that the layoffs are due to efficiencies created by AI, they avoid a potential confrontation. 

Companies also over-hired during the pandemic due to low interest rates and talent wars, but rather than admit errors, CEOs blame "right-sizing" on AI. 

 

The Doubletake Walk, 38th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Met the daughter and son-in-law for brunch today. Ran into Atlanta traffic both going there and coming back. Later, walked a 6.8-mile Quincy. 

Completed the NY Times Saturday crossword puzzle in 33:22. Solved today's Wordle in six attempts (phew!). Reached the Genius level on the Spelling Bee with 34 words worth 166 points.

I'm going to relax this evening by watching the last couple episodes of Fallout, Season 2, and playing The Outer Worlds 2.    

I'm in a Faulkner phase right now in my reading, so I'll get in a couple of chapters of As I Lay Dying before bed.

How was your day?

 

Quickglint Sidelong Blur, 37th Day of Hagwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Did you see that racist video the Stable Genius posted to his vanity social media? You know the one - I'm not going to share it here or even describe it in detail, other than to say it's a derogatory AI image of Barack and Michelle Obama.  

The video was among more than 60 posts and reposts the Stable Genius uploaded during a flurry of activity between 10:36 p.m. and 12:25 a.m. last night. Initially, his staff and loyalists said it was just a joke, "characters from The Lion King," and that people were over-reacting. Then, they had to admit that it really was some racist bullshit and took it down, and claimed the Stable Genius didn't post it, some unidentified staffer had.

I don't believe that alibi for a second, and encourage you to ask yourself honestly - which is more likely, that the Stable Genius posted a racist video among for flurry of tweets and mind farts late at night, or that a staffer thought he was helping the cause by posting it under the S.G.'s name?

I've worked for some very conservative, very Republican companies in my life, but anywhere I've worked, if someone had posted that from a company computer or on company time or in any way affiliated with the company, they'd have been fired. Immediately, no questions asked.

This will all be forgotten in a week as we move on to the next outrage, and there will be the next outrage, and then another and another, just as there has been for the past twelve months. How much more of this are you willing to take, America? Tided of "winning" yet? 

The Stable Genius is a hateful, demented, racist old fool, and it's time he was removed from the Executive Branch as expeditiously as possible for the good of this country and the American people.

 

Second Ocean,  36th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): We're halfway through Childwinter! Six six-day weeks down, six (and a day) to go. We're three dozen days into the season and the year, and by the logic of the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar, today is not Third Dozen but Second Ocean. 

Weird day. I awoke this morning from anxiety dreams that my car wouldn't start, even though I started it the Monday after the deep freeze of the previous weekend and then ran it for 30 minutes to recharge the battery, and then started and drove it again this week to pick up groceries and pharmaceutical for Eliot, my cancer cat. 

Premonitions being what they are, however, my car didn't start today. The battery just totally died - didn't even try to pretend to turn over. I had to call a jump-start company ($75) who got me started although not without difficulty and I drove my car on the charge from their jump straight to the Lexus dealer who sold me my battery and they replaced it for free (people scoff at me for driving a Lexus, thinking I'm obsessed with appearance and social status, but service like that and the fact that my car is still running after 16 years is the real reason).  However, the whole ordeal, from first trying to start my car to getting back home with the new battery, took over four hours. 

Which left barely enough time to shit, shower, and shave, scarf down a quick dinner, feed Eliot the cancer cat, and drive down to East Atlanta Village to see a show at The Earl. It was my first time back to The Earl in six years - the last show I saw there (the singer Mattiel) was in early February 2020 right as the covids were crashing down on us. 

The band Rich Ruth opened promptly at 8:00 pm and then the headliners, Taper's Choice, took the stage just a mere few minutes past 9:00. They played a nearly 1¾-hour set, but I still managed to make it home only a little past 11:00 pm.

Weird Day. Ocean days are simply the oddest.

The Laden Bough, 35th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): “When it is cold, let the cold kill you,” Tozan advised. Tozan (807–869), also known as Dongshan Liangjie, not only felt that the cold needn't be avoided, but advised something useful, something practical, to do with the cold - use it and practice with it to kill the ego-self that clung to its preferences.   

"When cold and hot come," Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253 AD) advised, "let go." He cryptically added, "Eyebrows totally fallen out, your empty name is killed."  Eyebrows falling out usually implies lying, the ever-helpful Shohaku Okumura explains, sort of like modern western culture associates lying with one's nose growing longer. But Dogen may have been saying that the eyebrows fell out because of our delusions about the cold, but once the eyebrows are gone, we have nothing left to lose and have to face the truth of our real self. 

The second of the Buddha's four noble truths states that our suffering is caused by our attachments and desires. It stands then that if we cling to a desire to change things that are outside of our control, we will suffer. Cold weather is an external event outside of our direct control, but our perception of the cold is not. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus (50 – 135 AD) advises us to accept the weather as it is rather than wish it were different. The Buddha would not have disagreed. 

Tozan was the cold as an opportunity to let go of the ego-self. Epictetus saw it as an opportunity to training for future challenges. "Neither a bull nor a noble-spirited man comes to be what he is all at once," he wrote in The Discourses (Book 1, Chapter 2.32). "He must undergo a hard winter training and prepare himself and not propel himself rashly into what is not appropriate for him." 

Epictetus' teacher Musonius Rufus (25 – 100 AD) said, "It is not good to be entirely without experience of cold and heat, but one ought in some degree to feel the cold in winter and likewise the heat in summer and to seek shade as little as possible."

The Buddha, the Stoic philosophers, and the Zen masters all seem to agree that patience and acceptance are keys to enduring the cold, and that denial of the changing seasons is not only unhelpful but makes things worse. Dogen once cited a Chinese proverb:  

In the jade palace, the kingfisher builds his nest

But the gold palace offers no shelter for the mandarin duck.

The kingfisher represents focus, patience, and at the right moment, swift and decisive action. It suggests a calm, mindful, and accepting state. Mandarin ducks, seen floating on the water in gardens and moats, following the currents and tides wherever they may lead, are associated with the transient nature of life. The jade and gold palaces, obviously, are happiness, success, nirvana. Contentment, the proverb is saying, comes to the patient and focused, and those caught up in the samsara of day-to-day existence will not find peace. 

To face the cold, as well as the other challenges of life, we should adopt a calm and accepting mind, embrace them as opportunities to strengthen our resolve and practice, and avoid trying to change or wish away those things which are beyond our control. I'll try to keep that in mind when the next cold front comes through here next week.

We'll let Dogen have the last word:

In spring hundreds of flowers, in autumn the clear moon,
In summer a cool breeze, and in winter the white snow,
If your mind is free of vanity, then every season is fine.

 

Plains of Paradise, 34th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The cold is gone and today I walked an 8.4-mile Van Buren even though I missed my previous walk due to last weekend's single-digit wind-chill temperatures. Today's high temperature was about 55°, which felt quite comfortable after the previous days of teens and twenties. In the here and now of the present moment, there is no cold, and this goony bird forgot about building nests and frolicked in the warmth. 

There was a time of cold and a time of suffering and then there was a time of no cold and no suffering. There will be a time of heat and a time of suffering, and there will be a time of no heat and no suffering. Tozan suggests we meet the cold and shivering  as well as the heat and sweating with acceptance of those transient moments and leave the suffering behind. Epictetus just entered the conversation and agrees with Tozan.

Meanwhile, it's still sinking in that after the raid on Fulton County and seizure of the 2020 election ballots, Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard have my name, my date of birth, my social security number, and know for whom and how I voted. What they're going to do with that information is up to them and the Stable Genius, but I suspect I'll experience their retribution one way or the other, either directly or indirectly.   

Day of the Voyage, 33rd of Childwinter, 526, M.E. (Castor): Every time it gets bitter cold, I reflexively revisit Tozan's "Go to a place that's neither hot nor cold." I did it last November, when the first cold blast of Hagwinter hit the American South. I did it two winters ago. I did it way back in 2010. The problem with maintaining a blog for 20+ years is that the ruts my mind is stuck in become so painfully obvious. Yet when the temperatures aren't uncomfortably cold or hot, I don't think very much about Tozan or his advice. 

Zen Mater Eihei Dogen (1200-1253 AD) wrote a poem in apparent response to Tozan's advice:

How can the three realms and ten directions be all one color?

Who would discuss the difference between human and heavenly beings?

Do not convey talk of birds suffering in the cold.

The lake with no heat of anxiety is on the snowy mountain.

Contemporary Zen Master Shohaku Okumura (1948-present) helpfully explains that "birds suffering in the cold” is a reference to an allegorical pair of birds in the Himalayas. In the night, when it is extremely cold, the female bird repeatedly complains, “Cold is killing me. Cold is killing me.” Her mate replies, “Let’s make a nest tomorrow. Let’s make a next tomorrow.” However, when the sun rises and it becomes warm, they forget the plan of making a nest, and just enjoy the daytime. When night comes again, they complain in the same way. They repeat this every day and every night though their entire lifetime.

Whenever the temperature drops below the mid-20s here in Atlanta and my furnace can't keep my house as warm as I'd like, I turn to Tozan. "Help me make it through the night," I beg. "Give me some words of wisdom to help me endure this bitter cold." Spring comes as it always does and I need the Wikipedia page to even remember who Tozan was.

The "three realms and the ten directions" in Dogen's poem is a poetic reference to the entire universe throughout space and time. It's not all one color and we can't expect it to always have the same comfort-zone temperature in all places at all times. It is a basic Buddhist understanding that there is no difference between human and heavenly beings. Depending upon how we look at it, life can be either heaven or hell. When they suffer with cold, those birds complain and make up their minds to build a nest where they can sleep comfortably, but when the sun rises and it becomes warm, they forget about the cold night and their plan to make a nest is never carried out. Dogen ends the poem by pointing out that despite the bitter cold, in the same snowy mountains where the birds live there also supposedly exists a mythological lake that was thought to be the paradise source of all rivers in the world. Warmth in the cold, cold in the warmth.

It's 41° outside today. My furnace is easily able to keep me comfortably warm and I've stopped dripping my faucets. The storm has passed for now. Time for this goony bird to forget about Tozan until the polar vortex fails again and another mass of cold Arctic air spills over the North American continent.

 

Day of Domain, 32nd of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Philosophy can't keep you warm in winter. You can't skin it and wear it, you can't burn it, you can't sit beside it and feel the warmth emanate off of it. It's truly worthless in the cold. 

But still, it does put things in perspective. The weather's never hot nor cold; hot or cold is our experience of different temperature ranges. Given time, we can acclimate to different temperatures - last night's official (NWS) low of 19° F might seem downright balmy to an Inuit or an Antarctic explorer. I've seen people sweat and complain when the temperature gets up into the 80s, although here in Georgia anything below 90 is considered "mild."

I like temperatures in the 90s. I'm comfortable in the 90s. I wasn't comfortable last night. 

It's perfectly acceptable but not quite correct to say, "it's cold outside." People understand what you're saying, which is the whole point of communication, but what is that "it?" "It's" not cold - you're cold. We can say "a cold air mass" has moved into the region, but it that air mass is only cold relative to the temperature of other air masses and our 98.6° bodies. A 19° air mass is incredibly warm relative to the unimaginably cold zero-degree Kelvin temperature of interstellar space. In fact, there's virtually no difference between a 19° F air mass and a 91° F air mass compared to the 0° K cold of outer space. 

Those thoughts didn't make me feel any warmer last night.

My furnace has been running virtually non-stop for some 36 hours now, and the thermostat still hasn't caught up to the setting. The temperature in the house never dropped below 70 last night, at least while I was awake, but there was a chill in the air that felt far below 70°. To prevent the pipes from freezing, I let every faucet in the house drip overnight, and they're still dripping now. I started the car today and the battery didn't want to turn over, although with some coaxing I finally got it to start, and I let the car idle for a half hour to warm the engine and charge the battery.

No, there's no "hot" or "cold" other than our own response and disposition toward the temperature, but there's also no escape from the sensations of "hot" and "cold." "Hot" and "cold" is just the universe being the universe and our experience of "hot" and "cold" is just us being ourselves. 

That thought still didn't make me feel any warmer last night, and it wasn't supposed to.  But it did help me understand that what I was shivering through was just my reaction to things as they are, and instead of fruitlessly wishing things were different perhaps I should just observe them and myself, put an extra blanket on the bed, make sure my cat Eliot was comfortable, and wait for the sensation to pass. 

Zen and Stoicism agree that suffering exists and also that it's mainly self-imposed. Zen's solution is a sort of annihilation of the ego-self through the practice of meditation; Stoicism's solution is through application of logic. My approach is contemplative stoicism, a bit of both.

Update: At 4:04 pm, the outdoor temperature reached 35°, my indoor thermostat finally caught up to its setting, and the furnace finally got like a five-minute break.