What I'm Thinking About Now

Hello and welcome to what I hope will be a bit of a meeting place – albeit a somewhat disembodied one. For many years now I’ve wanted to have something called What I’m Thinking About Now as a way of reaching across to people, and having people reach back.

Originally, I thought it might be nice to have a newspaper column with those words up on the marquee, so to speak, but the ambition gene seems to have skipped the hospital room where I was born and, at most, I may have mentioned this to one or two people, neither the owner of a newspaper. Oh, well.

Fortunately, and quite recently, a few friends liked this reaching across idea and put these pages together so that all such activities might have an actual home. Thank you – it’s very kind.

Let me end this first posting, then, with a poem I’ve grown pretty fond of. It’s by David Budbill, and I think he really got this right:

Bugs in a Bowl
Han Shan, that great and crazy, wonder-filled Chinese poet of a thousand years ago, said:

We’re just like bugs in a bowl. All day going around never leaving their bowl.

I say, That’s right! Every day climbing up
the steep sides, sliding back.

Over and over again. Around and around.
Up and back down.

Sit in the bottom of the bowl, head in your hands,
cry, moan, feel sorry for yourself.

Or. Look around. See your fellow bugs.
Walk around.

Say, Hey, how you doin’?
Say, Nice Bowl!

— from MOMENT TO MOMENT: POEMS OF A MOUNTAIN RECLUSE, Copper Canyon Press, 1999