Back in a Flash

Followup to last two days' Saunters posts. Just got up from a nap after on the spot laser surgery today to reconnect retina.  Optometrist met here told Katrinka that couldn't be done. Doc said it could if it's just separated a little. Cost 1,638,000 IDR - $122.86  Hurt a tiny bit. Was three hours at the hospital in Denpasar. In two days there only maybe saw one foreigner in the corner of the eye that was still flashing. Not much English today. I understood most of what the doctor told me afterwords. She was nice. Wants me to come back for her to take a look in two weeks.

At the Sick House

Continued from yesterday's flashing crescent story. Called our doctor this morning and he came right over and talked to me a bit. He suggested I see an opthamologist at an international hospital - they'll take you right away and specialize in dealing with foreigners. I said they were too expensive and I wouldn't learn anything. Wanted to go to one for locals. He asked if I wanted a free one. No - how about something in between? We'd heard of one in particular - Sanglah. He said yes it's good. It or Indera. But you may have to wait a long time there.
He talked to Nyoman, our local driver, and then I asked Nyoman to come in half an hour. The doc started to leave but I asked him to wait a sec, got a 100,000 note and he said thanks. House call for $7.50. Nyoman prefered Indera so I went there. Lots of people but I didn't have to wait long for anything. Had several eye tests before getting to the eye doctor - first person there who spoke English. I explained the flashing, said it wasn't as strong or often as yesterday. She did some tests, put drops in my left eye and shortly after checked it a couple of ways. Couldn't find anything wrong but arranged for me to see an eye surgeon tomorrow morning to make sure. Asked if I'd lifted anything heavy. Told me not to play tennis for a month or strain myself too much. She does yoga too and didn't tell me not to do it. Said I should be sure to go to the Vipassana retreat because it will be good for my mind. She wrote two scripts for eye drops. The receptionist downstairs applied them. I was out an hour after arriving. Clearly I got special treatment. Nobody waiting or working there seemed uptight or upset anywhere. I'd been to a number of different rooms and halls and floors. Had someone guiding me at all times. Nobody was in a hurry, would chat a bit and help me understand the right words to use for this and that. Total cost - twenty bucks. I felt like they'd forgotten to charge. And oh yes - hospital in Indonesian is Rumah (house) Sakit (sick). 

Independent Meditation Center Guide

At go sit dot com - thanks Peter Ford

Crescent Flashing

I was going to stay home and keep working, let Katrinka bring me take out, but got to a nice stopping place and decided to walk over to Annapurna to join her in dining on their great Indian style buffet. Out the door noticed strange flashings of bright light. Kept walking and looking around for what it was. Like lazer lights zipping by in the corner of my eye. Circular - part of a circle - crescent.
It was pretty dark. We live down a dark drive cause I got the hotel next door to disconnect two lights they had on all night out there. And the street's pretty dark too cause there's only overgrowth across and no traffic to speak of cause it's a dead end. Walking toward the lights and people the flashings continued every few seconds. Crescent zipping brightly. With plate in hand sat across Katrinka at a long table to join in the celebration of a friend's 21st year of not drinking booze. Met the couple sitting to my left, Paul and Diane. They stayed years ago in the apartment where we live. After a few minutes of conversation and mastication, said I thought I should share what was happening with me just in case I fall over dead or something and I explained what was happening to me. Turned out that Diane was a nurse in an eye doctor's office. She knew exactly what was happening to me and said I should see an opthamologist tomorrow morning and have my retina looked at. The jelly in it is shrinking or something and causing strain at the edge of the retina causing electrical impulses which I perceive as flashes. Diane told me not to put it off. I said I will call my doc first thing in the morning and he'll tell me where to go. Thanks Diane. And I thought I'd gotten the urge to go there just to eat and listen to the music with Katrinka.

When the vitreous gel inside your eye rubs or pulls on the retina, you may see what looks like flashing lights or lightening streaks. You may have experienced this sensation if you have ever been hit in the eye and see "stars."

These flashes of light can appear off and on for several weeks or months. As we grow older, it is more common to experience flashes. If you notice the sudden appearance of flashes, you should visit your ophthalmologist immediately because it could mean that the retina has been torn. From this site.

Teeny Tiny Ants

Ants rule. There are so many types of ants around here in Sanur - or anywhere. One type that really puzzles me are these teeny tiny ones I see mainly on the porch if a drop of something sweet has fallen. Many will be right at the sweet spot but others will be running around. What gets me about them is the speed they move. If it was us it might be like 150 miles an hour. And why are most of them running around in imperfect circles? What could be accomplished by that? Anyway, I leave them alone.
The only ones I don't want to see are your standard reds that bite. They are not a problem but they're around. One was on my laptop here in the living room and I ran outside with it to blow it off fearing a major assault driving us away but there's been no followup. Another thing that gets me when removing them from my arm or computer or whatever. I'll blow as hard as I can and often it's not hard enough. What super abilities they have. Back to the tiny ones. I searched for a bit and couldn't find anything definitive on them. Almost everything is how to kill them. Shame. 

Found the following comments on the Practical Machinist

We have had teeny tiny ants around our kitchen sink...smallest ants I've ever seen. From what I can find online they are either Thief or Pharoah ants.

I'm curious as to whether these little ants smell like "ant" when crushed. I dropped a coke bottle in some bushes at work and when I recovered it later I set it on my desk. Next thing I knew these little ant looking things were all over the place. But they didn't smell like an ant when crushed. We tried taking a digital picture of one to zoom in on it, but they move waaay to fast for that.

Remember - that wasn't me, DC. Back to me now. I know what ants smell like from working in trees especially on the Tassajara phone line. If I started climbing a tree and smelled ants, I'd get down immediately and pass on it. 

Started to read more about tiny teeny ants then realized. I've got a lot to do. There are infinite beings to save and a whole biosphere at risk - for a lot of us anyway it seems. But first had to get the ants out of my head so Katrinka and I went for a walk and - well here's a photo of a Komodo Ant we came across frightening two tourists. Thank goodness they're harmless - the tourists that is.

Tim Buckley Poetry

Tim Buckley Cancer Poems

John Bailes accompanying note at bottom of page.

Tim Buckley cuke page

******************* 

            
'Tit Jean grew a moustache and his mother said

             "Oh No!  Take it off!"  "Aw Ma I was just

             having a little fun"

Hakuin

Hakuin is everywhere, on everybody's mind

parsing canned fruit on the supermarket shelf

and someone said "He looks just like Hakuin"

I finally chose Libby's Premium Fruit Medley

The Chinese waiter in the Japanese restaurant

probably had visa problems on his mind

or his girlfriend or no-girlfriend and his lousy

pay or maybe his china goddess of mercy

having fun playing around with the blues

He had cropped hair brought fresh water

eels and rice eels were all skin and fat

no meat.  Ate it and asked for tea

he said I saw Hakuin today and he says hi

His paintings grew on the floor like fungus

He read the Heart like the funny papers

while I was just minding my own business

shopping for what i wanted next.  Peaches or pears?

Put a can in the fridge eat them cold, drink the syrup

Hakuin was sick a long time.  He could not even see

the blind leading the blind and so on until

he got better. He painted with stones and tree trunks

wrote short letters like "Death" and added postscripts:

"The shortcut to life"  Old, he told everyone

Just pray to the goddess of mercy 300 times a day

Finally picked chard from the garden

and had a nice supper, 7pm

***********************

how tender in the light filtered

between great storm clouds--

the pale green leaves,

young magnolia in the dooryard

***********************

for Suki, Tracy

old man sitting on the stoop

with his death, a cup

of coffee, a forbidden cigarette.

trees are full-leaved

but they are falling

red oak, red maple, white pine

birch, the suschh of wind

no sound he can name

pervasive.  His uncle died

like this, in beauty

rising through the forest

the clear blue dark sky

autumn high pressure

wind northwest, rising

green to blue rising, breathing in

the crisp morning air

***********************

The Argument

North Atlantic Basin

             theater of life and death       the rocks

run out green from Campobello

             scatter me here

ashes.

Snyder's right

             think of pterodactyl bones

spider mites, forget

             the hopeless invocations

of monks in coracles

             The Bay of Fundy stands steep

over Grand Manan banks on the ebb,

             wind southwest,

heavy helm in a hardnosed boat

             Island stones might run out

speckled white and aimed

             at the horizon, but let them go--

Irish monks, Northern, Basques,

             slaves in chains, the Italian

Keep the stink of cormorant shit,

             keep the breakwater, Point Judith

Harbor of Refuge down Little Rhody

             good hole

on a night like this.

Standing on the stoop watching the orchard again

             big apple trees

coming down

one by one     bark beetle

             they rot

from the bottom up  this morning

             two more

ready for the fire.

             Winter by winter

a small square meadow opens

             and I am desperate

for anything to leave

             to replace what I have taken.

I don't need these stories

             going round in my head

just tell it plain as possible

             like old Sarge said

--I was a kid, drinking--

             "Get out"         just flat

Trees fall         buck 'em up

             stay warm another winter.

Mizzen Head, the Skelligs, up past the SHetlads

             down to Sorlandet:

on Skjernoya cairns raised up old

             granite rain polished white

broad-based sea marks, Viking times

             Terns dart through long summer days

red-mouthed, agape.

Maybe there, maybe across Biscaya, in Galicia say

             or on the Algarve you see a conch

somebody's souvenir:

             polished ivory lip

pink depths swirl away beyond the sill

             where it sits on the edge of fall

in morning light

Or you see

             (past Porto Santo, Isla Graciosa, Sao Vincente, Barbados)

a thousand conchs covered in growth slime

             worm ridden

meld to sea garbage

             subside on Vieques'

coarse sand, rotting

             coconuts like skulls in windows

brown fronds

             kelp

plastic sandal and a five gallon oil jug

             bleaching at tide line,

old stories under palms

             tangled as plague      Come home,

old net float hung for a swing

             orange going pink in the sun,

Rockland, Maine.

Well, that poly' line gets scruffy

but it don't break.

As The Crow Flies poems

Tim Buckley 2011  

*********************

The vivid  lives of insects

so complete and purposeful

Parachute spiders ride the afternoon breeze

back-lit by sun, they sparkle silver.

One sails below a roof corner

casts his thread and swings

like a buccaneer, going exactly

where he's going, above grasshoppers

patrolling the sidewalk cracks

systematically, others flying

on double brown wings, striped

and surprising. Wind-riders,

hoppers that go like butterflies,

the little nameless bugs bright in sunlight

we might have missed

if their bigger kin had not

drawn our attention,

our admiration

*******************

"This will not do!"

damp chill on his shaved head :  the dog digs for bone intently

             Daylight is sound music is light and God really loves you

mostly green and wet bushes

             GRIEF CAUSES LUNG CANCER

(the old man's stick strikes, strikes again

o tears of Kannon)

remembering high seas the waves traveling and not

--more like stone rows from on top of one

you can't get there from here

*           *           *

That about wraps it up for the day, boss

canned tomatoes

or it's all a mess! Want to go

fishing?   That ain't the half of it

             I'll just sit down here and not do anything

(the grey car was backing out the drive without him)

             until I know what to do

"or hemp oil or a Tibetan herb doctor.  Acu

             puncture"

                           because

the shore is gone

**********************

this

the tumble

insects

sweet magnolia

heaving breath

kaleidoscopic

ocean peace

jumbled heart

red

swamp maple

leaves falling

**********************

Three Men Dancing on a River Shore

(Ch'ing Dynasty Serving Platter, Blue-and-White Porcelain)

for Tim Buckley and Tracy McCallum

In the background, you can see the city they left behind

when they crossed the river to dance on this shore,

three gentlemen in mandarin robes and scruffy beards

now jigging on the sand under pines and willows

accompanied by hired musicians on trumpet, flute

and drum, and one plying a squeeze-box of some kind

for these scholars waving their hands above their heads.

This was the dharma field of their friendship, their

getting to the other side, however briefly.

Three men dancing.  Not drunk, just immensely amused

knowing that soon enough there would be only the wind

shushing its sad music through these pines on empty shore.

****************


John Bailes writes:

Here are the entirety of Tim's "Cancer Poems."

We performed a Memorial Ceremony befitting Tim's stature. Peter Schneider, Joan Amaral and I were a Doshi trio.

Seventy or so people attended: family, friends and Buddhists. Everyone to a person to a person, Buddhist or not, offered incense at the altar kobaku after the ceremony. Service was followed by a social gathering whereupon, after some snacking and drinking, sharing of memories and experiences of Tim took place. Jorunn, Tim's wife started things off, followed by Jesse, Tim's son. John Balaban read a couple of his poems that were inspired by shared experiences with Tim and Tracy McCallum (who was married to Fran Keller for a long while), a brother to Tim from the time they were in their early twenties (before Zen Center) read a long poem entitled "The Argument" from Tim's self published book of poems "As The Crow Flies Poems." I also attach one of the poems that John Balaban read: "Three Men Dancing On A River Shore."

Love

John

Kites way up

Mentioned that kites are back the other day. Sometimes we see boys making big ones - like six, eight feet long - out of thin bamboo strips. They come bigger and smaller. We see them close up at the beach and up up and away. Actually, any day year round one may notice a kite or two in the sky. But now it's kite season - till it starts petering out in the fall. I love to see them far away, reminding me they're up there doing what kites do - so far away I can't tell what type they are, just that they are there, watching over us. Can you see them?