Galveston Day 6

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The Continuing Saga of Ghost Dog and the Buddha

Greetings from Galveston! Each morning I rose just before dawn and headed for the beach to catch the stellar event unfolding on the horizon. I was not disappointed. Most mornings Buddha stayed in bed, but this glorious morning he accompanied me out to the beach.

Moments before Sunrise
First the tide rushes in…
The Rising Sun
The Sun Also Rises

Today I wanted to ride around Galveston to look at some of the buildings. Galveston is home to some interesting old historic buildings and to some newer more modern ones.

American National Insurance Building, One Moody Plaza
United States National Bank

This building is being converted into condos.

Rosenberg Library

The Rosenberg Library is the oldest continuously operating library in Texas. I visited this beautiful library with the hopes of finding a clean well lighted place to study in. But, alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Due to covid the study rooms were closed. I was free to roam the stacks but not to study. I did come away with a book however, so all was not lost.

Hutchings Building in the Strand

The Strand Historic District, also known as the Strand District, in downtown Galveston, Texas, is a National Historic Landmark District of mainly Victorian era buildings that now house restaurants, antique stores, and curio shops.

Gaido’s Seaside Inn

Later in the day we headed back to the motel for a dip in the pool. We were staying at Gaido’s Seaside Inn, which according to their own testimony boasts of having the best pool on the island. Who am I to argue?

No Diving
Pool Side
Having a chat
Proof of Life – The Buddha

We ended the evening at a Mexican Restaurant. Buddha’s friends hadn’t heard from him in a while so I posted this picure to prove he was still alive.

Stay tuned for day 7 of the exciting adventures of Ghost Dog and the Buddha.

Dr. Seuss: “And to Think I saw it on Mulberry Street.”

/ Benn Bell / 5 Comments

OK, I guess I’ll weigh in on this. My two cents are worth about the same as anyone else’s, I reckon.

What we have here is an intersectionality. Where cancel culture meets book burning and freedom of speech meets banned books. Now, for the record I am against burning books and it seems like everyone has a match these days. And I have always enjoyed Dr. Seuss and even read these books to my kids when they were growing up….

But! There is no book burning going on here, no cancelling of Dr. Seuss, just a recalibration. His own estate has made the decision to not publish six books that contained overtly racist images. Six out of hundreds. And these books are still available. As a matter of fact, they are flying off the shelves!

We are living in strange times. The culture has evolved in many good ways in some bad ways. There is no question we come from a white supremacist patriarchal past. But that is not what we look like today. We are a multicultural, multiracial society and everyone deserves a seat at the table and everyone deserves to be included. It is important what books are put in front of children as they are the most impressionable among us. Reinforcement of white stereotypes and racial tropes is inappropriate. White children don’t need the reinforcing of white supremacy and children of color don’t need to be exposed to the hurtful images that remind them of their second-class citizenship.

This is a publishing decision, just like any other, but this one reflects the willingness of the estate of Dr. Seuss to learn and try to do better. It is not part of the so-called cancel culture, which I question really exists anyhow.

The Three Doors of Liberation

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Buddhism by the Numbers

The Three Doors of Liberation:

  1. Emptiness/shunyata
  2. Signlessness/animitta
  3. Aimlessness/apranihita

Emptiness or shunyata:

Emptiness always means empty of something. A cup is empty of water. A bowl is empty of soup. We are empty of a separate, independent self.

Emptiness does not mean nonexistence. It means interdependent co-arising, impermanence, and non-self. Emptiness is the middle way between existence and nonexistence.

Everyone we cherish will someday, get sick and die. If we do not practice the mediation on emptiness, when it happens, we will be overwhelmed.

Signlessness or animitta:

The second door of liberation is signlessness. “Sign” means an appearance or the object of our perception.

Signs are instruments for our use, but they are not absolute truth, and they can mislead us. Wherever there is a sign, there is deception, illusion. Appearances can deceive.

If you see the signlessness of signs, you see the Tathagata. Tathagata means the wonderous nature of reality.

Everything manifests by means of signs.

Life span is the period of time between our birth and our death. We think we are alive for a specific period of time that has a beginning and an end. But when we look deeply, we see that we have never been born and we will never die. And our fear dissolves. With mindfulness, concentration, and the Three Dharma Seals, we can unlock the door of Liberation called signlessness and obtain the greatest relief.

Aimlessness or apranihita:

The Third Door of Liberation is aimlessness. There is nothing to do, nothing to realize. The purpose of a rose is to be a rose. Your purpose is to be yourself.

Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. Just being in the moment in this place is the deepest practice of meditation.

According to the Heart Sutra there is “nothing to attain.”

Aimlessness and Nirvana are one.

Present Moment, Wonderful Moment

              Waking up this morning, I smile

              Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.

              I vow to live freely in each moment

              and to look at all beings with the eyes of love.

              -Thich Nhat Hanh

These twenty-four hours are a precious gift, a gift we can only realize when we have opened the Third Door of Liberation.

The practice of aimlessness, is the practice of freedom.

Based on the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh

Photo by Benn Bell

Golden Globes 2021

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Tina Fey and Amy Poehler

The Golden Globes show last night was pretty much a disaster. It was technologically challenged, there was no chemistry between the hosts, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, possibly because they were bi-coastal, not to be confused with bi-polar. The writing was poor and most of the jokes fell flat, marring the event beyond any possible recognition. I did agree with a lot of the picks and enjoyed some of the acceptance speeches. Jane Fonda’s was exceptional. Some of the others were just plain dumb. Speaking of dumb, I stuck for the entire show. Sigh…

Zuckerman Unbound

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Book Blurb

Not the best Philip Roth book but pretty good. It always amazes me how Roth can take the ordinary and turn it into literature or a simple idea like what happened to him after he became famous after publishing Portnoy’s Complaint and spin gold out of it. Pure genius! And quite funny too, I might add. I had several laugh out loud moments as I was reading this book. Highly recommend!

Top 10 Books 2020

/ Benn Bell / 3 Comments

I read 28 books in 2020. Here are my top 10 favorites:

  1. 2666 – Robert Bolano
  2. The Follies of God – James Grissom
  3. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
  4. The Adventures of Auggie March
  5. The Odyssey – Homer
  6. All Quiet in the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
  7. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
  8. The Weight of Ink – Rachel Kadish
  9. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
  10.  The Last Carousel – Nelson Algren

Rainstorm

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There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.”
― Tsunetomo Yamamoto, The Hagakure: A code to the way of samurai

Photo: Benn Bell

Nomadland (2020)

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Movie Review

Nomadland (2020)

Directed by Chloe Zhao, starring Frances McDormand, David Strahairn, Linda May

This is a movie about America. There are two Americas. The haves and the have nots. This about the have nots who choose a life on the open road and freedom. It is not a life I would choose but it is a fascinating portrait of those who do. They are called American Nomads.

Frances McDormand turns in another brilliant but understated performance as Fern, the strong and determined woman, who takes to the open road after she loses her job at US Gypsum, a plant where she and her husband, who has recently died, had worked for years. The plant closing in Empire, a small town in Nevada, causes the economic collapse of the town. This is the sad reality of so many small towns in America.  

Fern sells her stuff and buys a van and takes to the road searching for work. She outfits the van to live in. She first takes a seasonal job at an Amazon fulfillment center through the winter. Whenever I buy anything at from Amazon, I cringe a little bit thinking of the workers at the fulfilment center, although Fern seems to thrive in this environment. A co-worker invites Fern to visit a desert winter gathering in Arizona organized by Bob Wells, which provides a support system and community for fellow nomads. At the gathering, Fern meets fellow nomads and learns basic survival and self-sufficiency skills for the road.

Fern later takes other jobs down the road: an RV camp host, a worker in a beet harvest, and a worker in a fast-food restaurant. It is a tough life living at the margins. She continues to run across some of the other nomads she has met along the way as she continues her travels and they become her friends and kind of a family or tribe. She does have a chance to settle down a couple of times along the way but continues to choose a life on the road to be free and independent if, lonely.

There is not much of a dramatic story here, more of a character study and a documentary on the nomadic existence in America. Even if we can’t identify with her way of life we can empathize with her very human feelings of loneliness and her desire to be free. As Bob Wells so aptly put it, “I’ll see you down the road.”

The Ballad of Ted Cruz

/ Benn Bell / 5 Comments

Ted Cruz is a particularly odious politician

Who left the country in a lurch

While his people froze in their homes

In Texas

He was on a plane to sunny Cancun

To say anyone in Texas would do the same

Misses the point by a mile

To say all politicians are the same

Also makes me smile

Ted Cruz takes the cake

Now he can eat it too.