entering

March 3, when I arrived in Portland and had a four-hour window to wait on my about-to-be-landlady, I drove to The Rhododendron Garden, bought an annual pass, and strolled through places I knew, out to my bench – I’d dreamed of it five years. I honored my return with great attention. This past Saturday I stopped in again after coffee – four Garden visits now – and brought my vast attention along with me. I looked with my ears, and knew the place through my feet. My eyes were dancing.

David Hinton, translator of ancient Chinese poetry and classic Ch’an Koan texts, translates certain ideograms as “Absence” and “Presence.” Presence the 10,000 things – everything – burgeoning forth from Absence – the place of no thing. Call it The Dao. Call it Heaven and Earth. Call it winter and fall. Presence burgeoning forth in spring, living summer in all its glory. Dying back with the coming of autumn, and the empty enactment of winter.

I share this Ch’an/Zen/Buddhist/who cares stuff because when I entered the Garden Saturday at noon, 18 days from my initial foray, the magnificent spaciousness of spring burgeoning forth was everywhere, in everything – the song of ducks, the soft breeze off the lake, every tree so bare just those 18 days in the rear view, now beginning its flowery-green journey to May.

And these eyes, forever changed.

This below is simply pointing at it. It ain’t it. And yet…..