Category Archives: meditating wind

The Obama Vegetable Garden

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Meditating Wind

Michelle Obama will plant a vegetable garden in the White House backyard. This will be the first White House vegetable garden since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Garden, and I find that surprising. You’d think at least the Carters, as peanut farmers, had planted some collard greens and okra back there.

Eleanor Roosevelt planted her garden as a model of self-sufficiency during the hard times of the Depression and World War II. Michelle wants to plant hers as an example of healthy nutrition for her family. Also, she plans on having everyone in the family participate, even Barack. There’ll also be two beehives. And best of all, she plans on growing everything organically.

Click on the graphic below to read the New York Times article.

obama garden

Looking at the garden plan, this is what I notice:

  • It’s heavy on the spinach and other leafy vegetables.
  • Also, there are lots of peas. That’s good for fixing nitrogen.
  • Along the path, there are nasturtiums and marigolds. These are great for chasing off root pests like nematodes.
  • A berry patch will be set apart from the garden, as will a small mint patch. This is a good strategy as these plants tend to intrude into everything around them.
  • Finally, an herb garden will make up a corner of the plot.

Well, that’s a good start. But this is what I would add:

  • When I see that expansive lawn, I want to dig it up into rows. I think a cornfield would be really cool. I planted a small one in my back yard in Oregon, and it was beautiful and elegant. A classic corn, beans and squash garden would be the ultimate in Americana.
  • I also noticed there was no basil. Basil is so expensive that it pays for itself after one fresh pesto batch.
  • And garlic is life! It should be planted.  It’s so easy to grow. Just stick the cloves in the ground and forget about it.
  • There are no beets because Barack doesn’t like them. I too never liked them as a child because I ate the canned beets in school, which made me wretch. But fresh beets, lightly steamed, is a completely different vegetable.
  • What no sunflowers?! What’s more optimistic than a row of big smiling suns?
  • Okra would be a great symbolic gesture to the South. Plus it’s tasty. And if you let it go to seed, the okra eventually opens up into a white hibiscus flower. Yeah, okra is a flower bud.
  • And finally, there should be lots of fruit trees.

I think a lot can be learned from taking care of a garden. The complexity of the ecosystem, tending things from beginning to end, feeling connected to the earth by putting your hands into the dirt. All are great lessons to be learned. It may give the President some insights, as well as help him to relax. Maybe he’ll be the first President whose hair doesn’t go gray. He would definitely be the first to have dirt under his fingernails.

Pain=Compassion

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how to burn a man at the stake

When you’re face down, immobilized with pain, for nearly three days, there’s not much you can do. DVDs and the TV just frayed my nerves. The endless expanse of the Internet was exhausting. It was hard to concentrate while reading books. Eventually, I gave into the pain and boredom and allowed myself to do nothing.

Strange things happen when you are forced to do nothing. For me, old memories, some 20 years old, decided to shake themselves free from the cluttered heap of my brain and sat down with me while they told their stories.

They were like old unsolved mysteries, finally made clear. Continue reading →

The King of Pain

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headless satori

This past week, I experienced the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt. The sciatica, which is a pinched nerve, made the agony in my left leg unbearable. Painkillers hardly made a dent in it. Words can’t describe the ordeal, so I’ll paint the picture in cold hard numbers, Harper’s style.

• Days spent immobilized lying flat on my stomach: 3 Continue reading →

Meditating Wind no. 66: Forbidden Mandala

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Meditating Wind no. 66

The ring of jagged rocks is an art installation at the Setagaya Art Museum. As I was setting up this photo, a man came out of the museum and scolded me for doing this.

“Even though this is outside, this is still art. You can’t just walk in there.” Well, of course I knew this was art. That’s why I was interacting with it in this creative way. But my Japanese was too limited, so I just did what everyone in Japan does, bowed and apologized.

In my defense, there was no sign or tag describing the title and artist.  And no “Do Not Enter” sign.  For all I knew, it was interactive art.  The man also warned me that people have gotten hurt on the jagged edges. If that was the case, I wonder why the piece was displayed in such an open accessible place, where just meters away were many kids running around.

But he was absolutely polite about it. And it was part of the art experience, the symbolism of being told not to enter a circle. A circle that is at once forbidding, because of its sharp edges, and invitingly accessible, because I just had to step over the barrier.

Meditating Wind no. 37

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Meditating Wind no. 37

I haven’t posted pictures lately in the Meditating Wind series. So I dug out a pair from the archives of my mac and put them in my flickr account. These were taken in Ueno Park just outside the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ueno is full of museums and so it’s one of my favorite neighborhoods. But you don’t even need to enter a museum to be among art. There’s public art everywhere. Even the police substation in the center of the park is an interesting architectural curiosity, with Darth Vaderish Bauhaus elements. And don’t miss the excellent Rodin collection that’s just outside the entrance of the National Museum of Western Art.

These two pictures seem to represent different kinds of meditative experiences. They both play with perspective and illusion. But in the one above, the self is prominent and separate from experience. In the one below, the self is an insignificant speck completely absorbed in experience, not self-conscious at all, but still present.

During meditation, I tend to go back and forth between these two states, eventually settling into one. I can’t say one is better than the other. In the detached, self-conscious state, I get more insight. In the absorbed, self-less state, I feel closer to pure experience and enlightenment. Or maybe I just feel more sleepy. I like how the silver ball melts into the sky, and the emptiness of the hole seems to be the most solid element in the composition.

Meditating Wind no. 38