good afternoon everybody
before we were speaking about the specificity of detail than so important to them
get ready
and i i mentioned various you know examples that
and i thought i might term
make sure i understand our time constraints yeah
yeah to read your couple of things this is from
a piece about i'm very interested these days and cranes and tigers and doing a book on the and fifteen crane species of the world and also eventually a book on long asian pieces one will be about lake by car and one will be about mustang
and one will be about tigers and i've had a chance to do caught lot of research with tigers and cranes because most of these very beautiful the splendid life forms seem to have originated in eastern asia so i've been going over there and try to combine our trips
and i went back to the siberian tiger tiger project those of you who
you may have seen a wonderful kurosawa film called they're soo good salah how many people have seen their suits a whole agonist kudla that's great but as you know the original book from which she came which is a masterpiece at my view is called us to the trapper and by the k or senior
a young russian geography lieutenant exploring this eastern part very far eastern part of siberia if you see it on the map and mexican a great clause siberia reaching down to touch north korea and syria and i said it's an extraordinary of faunal area with them
you know bears links and wolf and salmon in the north and leopards and tropical flycatchers and tigers the southern part but all kind of intermingling in the zone between then the quite like it the world and so beautiful it has a climate more or less like here the colder and wetter quite a lot
item anyhow that's
i'm going back and forth to the siberian tiger project that's there and just briefly the siberian tiger and the bengal and probably the only two races of tiger which will make it through the next twenty five years than eight races altogether
hum and three are already gone and least two perhaps three on on the brink of extinction so they one of the animals that pr most interested in saving their called by biologists umbrella species because if you say them you also saved many others and a great deal of habitat so i'm
i'm very interested and tigers and the cranes and and the whales hopefully first because they're magnificent and second because they say important in terms of biodiversity and
saving these ah i went to i went to siberia for the tigers the first time and it was also a crane expedition of the amur river wonderful
and that time i got there day after they attract this beautiful young tigris i called lena house your nickname she's only the second one trap by the project i got there the next day and
are we checked through the woods because she'd been tapped and of up you know tranquilizer
a rifle fired dart and then took blood samples weighed her and so forth just to check her health and then she was released but she didn't move very far shown he moved about a mile of this loose creek and then she was still for about three or four days when they are very worried and we didn't really know whether she was pregnant and because of the shock of the captcha
a even though the capture is very well done now compared to the old days is a kind of a clamp on the forward part of the paw doesn't even break the skin but as the creature struggles and titans so she really cannot get out of it and there's a lot of emotional stress for the tiger of course bob and that is not desirable
they've learned they sort of perfected a tranquilizing treat for found they lose very very few animals but occasionally i do those one but she was seem not to be recovering from this stronger this expanse you just was not moving and she had the radio cause they could tell that when she's lying still are standing still it goes like
meet
hmm
hmm maybe not even that fast
so we went up a this beautiful woodland and as you know this will end as this or temperate and boreal
woodland and it's very much like our woodland here the same genus the same genera know oaks almonds and vase evergreens and maples everything pretty much the way we have across this a temperate regions here but the species are different so you seem to be going to this kind of dream would which
it's almost like the would you know at home
and it's like a childhood tail would you know and is full of wonderful flowers and ferns new hit thrushes going with not our thrushes as that sort of situation
and we snuck up to within about a hundred yards of this tigris
i'm just honestly read your couple of passages she and i just i want you not reading this to him
my work probably i am way landed but
am but i want you to see if you notice what are they one of the details that the kind of details we were talking about earlier are the ones that really make it come up if they do and they may not but you can be the judge of that
the researchers told me that lena signals were still coming from a wooded drainage area known as the cooner lyca in the southern part of the reserve very close to the sight of her capture two days earlier
immobilization drug stuff the next day in the hope of monitoring the tiger signals more precisely retract into the forest following a creek upstream for several miles through hardwood tiger of oak and birch cottonwood in maple poplar ash and elm were scattered bias on a demo trail all but closed by friends were big rock
pug marks or footprints perhaps season and made by lena perhaps not farther on with deep scratched trees were a tiger had sharpened his claws eventually we arrived at the site where lena had been snared a large cottonwood where the ground was torn up all around and a strong saplings the kamat as thick as a man
ons arm that had been snapped off clean lena's captors spoke with quiet all the terrible roars and lunging the ferocity with which this young female had made three swift charges on the cable of her snare before she could be tranquilized since then she had moved less than a mile upstream using some rough triangulation
how to fix your precise location we paused at a point estimated by dr horn aka to be approximately one hundred yards from the tiger over the receiver came more rapid beatings
beep beep beep beep beep beep beep harness the corresponding to my heart at that moment
because you know this tigers up and you know she sees you and she not that far away and should not well you see over the receiver game rob beams indicating that lena was up and moving and had us located to she did not roar but nobody believed that she was in good temper i envisioned her with her head raised and
alert or small round white spotted ears twitching and the greenish sunlight in the fragmented son shares of the woodland the head would be camouflaged by bowl black calligraphic lines inscribed on frost bright browse and beard and rough and a beautiful and terrifying mask of snow and fire
well a few days later we had to go even closer because she still hadn't both and when i left the in fact she hadn't moved and they were really seriously worried we we really tried to get her up from going with that's how close we we pushed it on second day and actually a day or two after i left she did get up and she was fine she went back onto her
hunting circuit and this is june and october she had a litter she had four kids they can tell out by the for prince relayed new tractor and so this is very very exciting for this project because i'm this is the first continuity of generations that they had had and as have a steady purposes it
was critical to the biologist while in november they heard the deep slow down again and it was static again and one of them drove out to this part of this lumber road she's the only road out there is a lumber road and back the only vehicles or lumber vehicles and
they're the collar was cut through and far off the so dress and she had clearly been poached
and while they were talking about it consulting how to do they are somebody over someone else's shoulder saw this cub or by this time the cubs or bobcat sizes up like this and he was struggling up the hill through this drift and they knew those cubs with and a cubbies i'm not the word i'm
want and tiger cubs yet cuffs
bear cubs type of the next day they came and they made a kind of a surround and i caught all for on they all got caught up apparently these little guys are tough as they can be o two died very shortly the out of genetic
yoda faults and is probably because of inbreeding when you get a low population like this they were because they are prone to that sort of thing that it was not apparently me because of the poaching episode and then i'm or hurt in any way and the other two are here now if you ever and yet either in indianapolis in the minneapolis soon
i think come i want to see the indianapolis she's also called in and she's she's very beautiful so if you go to indianapolis it's a nice through anyway if you like zoos
they asked me to come back and see one in the wintertime i didn't get back for about four years and
by that time another young tigris had moved into lena's range and lena's range that crossing this logging road and there's not a truck out there that hasn't got a rifle ready to go these tigers are worth about fifteen thousand bucks apiece to the chinese medicine trade and you know you can hardly blame people in today's russia for shooting them and am
they're also they really looking for elk we had elk every supper time while i were out there and that's the prey days for the tiger so when we are other the tigers getting squeezed out here
so i saw the oh here we are
thirteen tigers have been collared release since nineteen ninety two as when i first went and were monitored being monitored by weekly from the air and one morning as the biplane used in projects surveys crisscross open valley and made a slow grinding turn over a logging road i saw the first wild tiger in my life bounding swiftly across over
the ground through two feet of powder snow and whisking out of sight beneath a great loan spruce alerted the pilot circle the spruce tighter and tighter i should tell you this airplane was like a huge cry was built in poland about nineteen oh eight
it was yes it was really an old crate is the absence of nothing in there to hang onto no seats that definitely old him to be a big motor up front and two wings and a pilot who was perfectly suited to this crap korea
snag all tooth and wild and unshaven and had even as hat was cocked or on one side and annually we had to go up to about three thousand feet to noted to receive the tiger the signal from the car the susie had that seemingly was like a pointers on yeah how i we are grinding around these
hills you couldn't believe it in our just was terrifying
and we did we didn't see the tigers at first even the winter sometimes they very hard to say
i'm so we saw this one now
and there it was but i almost only saw it kind of in silhouette and it was bounding across the our son just as so tiger emblem emblematic tiger is very low winter sun over the japanese sea of japan you know as paid a beautiful and am
but then it got into this pine grove ah and i glimpsed a flash of bold color and the shining greens than the sunlit burnt orange and golden brown of a splendid creature moving purposely but without haste over the snow sheltered by the trees it did not bound or hide but advanced and hurriedly
down a sparkling light corridor between the pines allows there are read this last little thing
i had another experience who was really even though that was my first tiger and i've been to india a few times i've never seen a tiger the tigers installers and don't see them ah
but something happened and i can you can tell and i tried to capture this experience what it was that the so awesome about this even though it seems not to have been so significant
this new tigris cartier's rather eerie she moved into the same territory and she to the pound and had a a cub and she too was crossing the road and we are terribly scared that she was gonna get shot and she seemed to be going over the kunal the same corner like a ballet there are a lot of elk and there and that's ratios hunting and then she we could be found her tracks we found it
tracks crossing the road not fifty yards from where they are lena had been shot and this is on a long empty road so empty and so vast you know that the common theme music coincidence that these two tigers two years apart would have the identical range was kind of spooky
the following day in the afternoon we stopped again on the ice bound empty road worthiness color had been found not to commemorate lena but because catchy and so forth on
the writ she caught she came down from region cross the road to make her way to the out bottoms her radio signal a pulsing beat like the hard shipping of a bird or like the rubbing of to stones together was loud and fast but that might mean only that are collar was rubbing on a frozen kill
to verify the existence of the litter we wanted to check the tiger tracks around the kill we couldn't do that while she was present we didn't want to crowd her and she wouldn't want heard a crowd us and it might not have been good for the carbon and so far so we sensibly abstained going down but then
radio collar where we came back on afternoon she was up on the ridge on the other side of the road so we decided to make a descent quickly to the kill and see what we could find a i have evidence down there we knew there was a killer because we can see ravens going to add up
the snow in the woods was to the this is the one are just listen and i'm just gonna ask for it at a response after this is over the best to pacific pick out the details and bring this alive for i'm just curious to know what works hammonton it if it brings it alive lawyer if it doesn't
well
the snow in the woods and was two feet deep and fluffy with try cold in the deep frost a pea green moth cocoon suspended from the twig was the solitary note of green in the bottoms we follow the smooth white surface of the kunal lanka which in this place might have been forty feet across on the river eyes
snow left by the wind was light and courteous pug marks were sharp as if in sized and steel in one place the tigris had lain down and stretch leaving a ghostly outline even to the great head and long tail the leg crook and the big floppy pause so clear that one could almost see
the stripes her ambush site was a river island and small bent black saplings against know uncanny camouflage for the white accents of her mask and her vertical black markings not far away the heart-shaped prince the young elk broke the ice glaze on the oxbow off the river and from the snow eh
evidence we were able to reconstruct precisely what had happened before prince came together with the elk stopped short
in a place of elms and cottonwood some seventy yards from the crouching tiger perhaps the l glistened sniffed and trembled for a moment big dark eyes round from this taught point it's suddenly sprang sideways attaining the far bank in one scared bound as the tigris launched herself from hiding and
cut across requires route and ten foot leaps eating silent round explosions in the snow shooting through the dark riverine trees like a tongue of fire she overtook the big deer and hauled down in a would have birch and poplar about thirty seven yards we walked it off from where she'd started str
viking from behind she'd grasped throat to suffocate her pray for there was little blood only the arcs of a bony out clegg sweeping weekly on the surface of the snow and alas sad spasm of the creatures urine
with logging trucks howling past perhaps sixty yards up the steep slope this was what was much too close to the road the tigris dragged the och some ninety yards farther back across the oxbow and the swamp island of the western bank where she had lain and hiding i shouldn't or up here to say the day before this we'd gone up to a village in the mountains
that dub are saying you have talked about ndrc ah be short and dare love it
and we were talking to him about an extension of this biosphere reserve it's there but they had just lost somebody to a tiger second and any softened we were showing exactly how that tigris took him in and kind of why there ah well it happened up the and so they were still go but in shock but they still say
said they wanted their tigers and the taiga would not be the same without without them and damn this is a countryside where there are so few people we drove all the way for this little fishing port of tierney on the coast up into the mountains drove i don't know four hours i guess we never saw another vehicle except for the logging trucks that are rich
thing off all the korean pine for japanese companies and am
no houses and very few people in this landscape so why even one person is immeasurable fraction of the human population so sergei denise as a serious what he was a sable trapper and by see gorky park she did you remember those beautiful sables going across the snow the most valuable for in the world are kind of a big weasel
okay and seeing as this is this tigris drag this l gives a young out but even a young yogis massive as your know and and the when the tigris a drag the up some nine yards for the back and seeing the smooth drag mark with its spots of blood one unwillingly imagine the similar tracks left by the
body of poor sergei denisov must have been close to the size and weight of this young carcass with the same astonishment in his wide eyes
the elk all that remained with the legs the head and the stiff course hide which usually abandoned by the tiger who was no meat left on the twisted carcass the eyes were frozen to blue ice too hard even for ravens
ah
what detail
detail who liked to say honey
you forgot the whole thing already
i like that for my oh yeah oh things and unexploded
explosions is now a where they're perfectly round like potholes in the snow snows in the island now
why
on the ice i think that was one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen and yet you couldn't photograph it was so light and so slight and so gossamer
he was kind of a
then teaching all by itself with the perishability said he was just so clear so precise and than the next node it would disappear he now
yeah
to the help in in explosions on the circles on the stone good god these are all great anybody else
the what
asked at this i want to compliment you on tooth exhausted the for details i would have chosen myself those the things that those little inconsequential seeming things that i'm really i think as is what you're looking for the i i was very struck by that green pond that cocoon because it was the only thing the only
hope of future the whole landscape are locked in by ice and cold you know guardian this black silhouette saplings but as one green part of incipient life you know waiting for spring to come over yeah that's great
i just want to congratulate you on your sitting this is it was a very strong sitting that last time and many of you have probably not sat before so i compliment you on your on your stillness if if my own group at home sometimes more restless than that
ah
yeah maka read anymore
and will you met some
i want you to do now we're talking about and we have been in the previous period we've been talking about this immediacy of effect
and how often you can't find words for an answer we'll struggle because overwhelming the way and article was
but sometimes start that is just you what is that we have our minds is so clouded by ideas you know we always we have all our symbols for example of death i talked quite a lot about death in my
on group because of our people interested in that and are people who are shy from that azalea so negative the you know you're so morbid well i don't know i think death is are ever present with as castmates pointed that out death is your best friend is to best advisor makes you appreciate your life
and damn
so i had this i gave a dharma talk at a show on on death and dealing with it with ms and point of view and how we you know how we think we see and handle it and maybe we'll be better prepared and ocean may be lonely may be whining like dogs the anfield law that made on
but to show you how incipient it is
member what ah every man said i think i quoted that is an epigraph in a book death thou chemist when i had the least mine
we all know people who are suddenly to suddenly overtaken by nervy ever incurable cancer other diseases suddenly comes on and they're gone very short time or and accidents can happen very quickly so each we should have this kind of awareness and try to understand what it is you know in our existence
and how ephemeral it is and also how glorious everything
so i want you to turn to the person next year
first and whether you know the monotony don't be shy put your hands up on there
cheekbones

just just just feel that the feel those those cheekbones okay i really have a sense of that look into each other's eyes look into each other's eyes
and just hold out for manage the fewer and meditation and now with your little fingers if you can or us or how are you can do it any other person can help you a little ah
ah lift the upper lip
don't don't be shy do it it
may the person like a loaf can curl her his own offer them
right now hot holding that holding the cheekbones and there you are
and now you can put your hands down
the
i'm hearing a lot of nervous laughter
no but i mean that we think of the we have these symbols about death and the skull is probably the leading wine and we don't really think that the skull is already there but there it is that teeth and bones that scholars right there the same skull somebody's going to find some digging sometime
the very same one of your loved one or your friend or your dharma brother whoever it may be
and that skull is with us always so as the skeleton of course but it's a good
reminder you know how close everything is
well if you were to describe that i'm writing you see that's the immediacy we can talk about scars with philosophize about death were blown the face wouldn't say that outcomes when i had the least in mind
but that's not nearly as powerful as that
that's the thing itself as we call tata as such this thing itself you don't have to say scala we don't have to say hollow eyes and morgues and cemeteries and stuff is just the thing itself it is right there with us
when you are writing a matches or other knowledge dramatic getting to choose but when you are writing that's kind of which you aren't you want it if you possibly can get clear and passions of things see see see here here here here that scrap of dialogue
get that smell smells are very difficult to describe but smells you know we all know we have certain smells in our life a come from childhood or wherever i use have one little sniff and a whole world comes back think would that smell carries either good or bad doesn't matter smell as an inch
honestly we don't even know it smell is the toddler pheromones is little particles in the air and stuff but this very hard and last forever
you know certain smells seem to stay right in your sinus or someplace near very easily vote to pay year we don't even understand actually with electricity as and i'm i'm delighted i'm delighted that there are things we don't remember wilko greatcoat about tom creep the fear we have of anything anything we don't have vocabulary for
we call supernatural and so we close our minds to enormous mystery last night i was talking about the power in auschwitz you all know my cloak if he's made this one fulfillment on ashes effort to us
where was i yeah i got derailed introduce human have either
oh
yeah yeah so you really you really do you kind of know this and the to read prose it's full as full of abstractions and cliches but before dead pros dead thought then whatever has no life and it no guts no spirit and by that i don't mean it has to be overawed of
purple you have to beware on the other side of profusely purple prose so-called is full of cliches there's no freshness in it at all if you want to read a truly fresh passage and is most unlikely place it's also i think it's as good a description of mystical experience as you can find anywhere and i'm positive that the
man who wrote it had no idea what he was describing he'd experienced it but he defied a note mystical experience was and that is a very very well known children's book the wind and the willows you know the wind and or loss you don't know it rushed to your a friendly neighborhood a bookstore is a chapter and they are called a piper at
the gates of dos it's simply a description of dawn and this cut from his way out it is pure opening up its opening up to the universe is just absolutely extraordinary and you do run across these things in literature where the person really knew nothing about his folks dance and yet the thing happens usually
they suppress it in of didn't find some was renamed down santa barbara flawed scritto said higher
courtois
yeah
yeah right floor for good wonderful lady she lives in santa barbara analogous and i went to see one time she had it as many people have she had an opening at the age of about all seventeen and she tried to tell people about it and everybody naturally thought she was crazy and told her so they just scared off and she just suppressed it
until and then years later she heard about yeah tiny roshi coming in news in the los angeles she thought maybe he has a clue and he just course laughed he said yes this is what we call and opening many people have a outside of san practice is not that uncommon i was once are working with improvised working american indian people as way up and on
blue creek of the headwaters of that call a doctor rocks or whole iraq up their northern california house with a very rough log i'm in this guy who's of part indian part white and what i realized he was extremely rough but a really nice guy and we were alone upon this ridge above blue creek work went down into the
klamath river and the sea fog had come up through the delta and then add worked its way around it became lambda and then was going back up blue creek sinuous see fog and it was thousands of feet below us and it was truly beautiful this guy was staring at it and he told me then that he'd seen this
once before like that
and then he told me how it felt and this was a guy with about one hundred word vocabulary if you really was almost an articulate but he then went ahead to describe the school experience and he was so scared and looking at me to see if i might laugh he would beat me senseless of i crack a smile
at a certain juncture there and he just said everything was perfect and complete justice was he didn't quite say that little bit more like our pilot which is a cliche to
he'd but he it was unmistakable what he was describing and of their head to his eyes were missing up as he said i wish is for diagnostic do
and then i did laugh and is it will happen and i said well you just you described mysql experience and this is what it is and it's wonderful and i congratulate you the poor guy was so leave and he told me he always thought he was crazy to have this experience and i kind of submit to you i think
many people who come to this practice have had a glimpse of that the light off the pines something happens and sending those past and you have other muslims of lost paradise for something and you know something very important as out there that you should be seeing but you're not you know you know there's another way of seeing another realm and
you have that that glimpse
i got off on that i'm opposite punchy and rambling here and sign them
so i've talked enough that i'm being or talk again when i have a captive audience
are there any questions
we we could find her some tiger lowest school that was in the new yorker has called tiger in the snow the usually tacked is terrible titles on
but week lawyer
january sixth nineteen ninety seven natasha

right
true
yeah i think storytelling as an extraordinary important to the important part of our the human culture not our culture all peoples tell wonderful stories and have myth and everything one thing that interested me about the watson the story and i was my
trilogy i wanna hit boy that up but still in it was happening down in southwest florida right now even though this man was killed eighty seven years ago they are still talking about it and you see the legend and mr watson who is supposedly killed fifty five people he didn't but ah they
you see that legend gradually turning into myth and the two sides that were against each other that day and one side says they shot in self defense they killed him because he raised his gun and the other side say no you people ambushed and yours set to kill him when he came in on his boat to this and and ads are still being debated and i like
does to watch that transition of story and a legend and myth is really wonderful but all cultures habits and all the myths we know i think in traditional peoples who originally stories that gradually over the years in the telling became fixed you know fixed in the culture and for some reason they're enormously important i knew a man these people
really stone age people who work with new guinea
he was a terrible coward on the battlefield he had all kinds of moral defects are quite noticeable at once up but
he knew the stories and he was absolutely treasured in the culture for that reason he was the only one that knew all the stories she was very smart they forgave him everything that know certain the navajo people they tell stories only in winter you're not supposed to tell stories and some in the summer there's plenty to do is hunting
whatever so you save stories for winter on people really need them especially in the northern tribes and us by sileka stories are very very precious the tail tellers are always precious and they have been throughout history even in only have been writing very long but the tail telling has been going on forever and that's why
think as such so important for riders i don't mean you can't do one of a little sketches
because even somebody like ray carver he wrote these little they weren't little they weren't because he picked the right details and even though they were extremely spare there was a whole story unraveling behind this selection retails so he's a real master but the carver imitators and present stuff and i really
our and not really telling stories and i think most of those kind of things will go away the future like all dry leaves you know but storytime for me in writing is very important now i know it's how to fashion that's considered old fashioned i'm kind of old fashioned guy myself now get caught up in a longer but am am
may be as my prejudice but i don't think so i don't think so i the storytelling is in a comeback in the novel and things very very important i think people who don't tell stories they're at risk of vanishing forever except in their own little
ah bali that prejudice aside
next question
no question oh yeah
and didn't you come from a wound up lots of by see charles
at in which which costs
oh yes state
he last not songs see shackles
in danish
i'll tell you a little song danish remote
my forbear the first peter madsen is whaler but then he got into europe he got he's a smart fella and probably not very honest they did quite well from self an even for a while he was he was the mayor of copenhagen in an illicit government that took over add king christians government threw him out
and these guys are all beheaded and drawn and quartered except for peter mouse and sneaked away and later became a director of the royal ground wailing and ceiling company
he still hated him and copenhagen because he got away with murder not only did he get away but he saw how range things for himself that he got an annual stipend
and from the city from thence forward well i don't know if he is the same ones a very famous danish poem and it shows a really stupid looking guy and and observer derby hat he's riding a pig the pig is going out on the thin ice and falling through i don't speak danish but this is approximately
but it sounds like anybody who does speak danish you can correct me as us
of dem g isn't
i think is on the ice on own creation on a pig
walla love be edition p tell my ts
how is that are well known primer and and ah ha
and that's the only danish chatty i know i do know a few years ago i went to this little island called for and i want to see what but there's only one matheson left there and he's rather decrepit figure but are there are a lot of cousins and things they showed me and there was a cathedral there that my great great
forbear he was a great weight or even by their their standards he really was and he was called lucky matthias and matheson son of matthias you know mathewson in their plantation
and there's an old woman hanging around this is cathedral that he and his brother had canada contributed chandelier to run on some do and they were there
and with we said i had her she spoke so friesian and german and and friesian has quite of english words and tone and that they're also considered to be extremely stupid people are jokes about friesian something down the coast
anyway i asked we asked heard of you do as they're still do people still remember
lucky matthias
who really died and how the end of the seventeenth century
yes and we hate him
has that wow talk about tradition
yeah
i'm sorry i'm rambling
i am not on how he are useless in a fine

he added
well i do i do i do and i have a my own zen group and i'm
and i teach and elsewhere to little bit as for example today last night a little bit but
i really am essentially a writer you know
them i didn't even want to teach very much my teacher my former teacher i always tell my teacher said second oh he he he wanted me to teach
but now is it is a contrary devil
you can never count on to say the same thing twice in a row and as i told him not long ago i said listen you know i'm i wonder about her running a zen group i i give it a lot of time i think it again if you do that you've gotta do it but i spent a terrible amount of time the students and i love these people
i'm very glad to do it but i'm also running out of energy and doing i'm trying to a great many different things at once and i've told him yesterday and i really like to go back to writing if i write about you
right about buddhism again or something but but but and i'm gradually moving my group over to my senior monk so the that is that'll happen but still she years and then and going immediately said you should be writing so you should not be running her sitting group or yeah yeah i got me into this
in her and i i am i feel that more and more so and i don't know there is a conflict and no question about it and also the conflict as somebody i'm asked earlier you know you there in a way that today no matter how i approach it who whom i him about i'm talking about number one
i'm telling stories that reflect more or less well on myself or on my work
and up and people actually often when i give a talk in public i am i feel even if it's gone very well i feel big down afterwards i feel as if i've been eating nothing but the icing on the cake is something unhealthy about it you know and even night at in away on the other hand is very good practice it throws my own ego
under the my face all the time i have to deal with that out whether it works or not i don't i don't quite know but there's no question as a conflict here
i does that answer your question
could you are differentiated top story and plot and yeah says on a lot
yeah story it is hard and it is hard to distinguish superficially of between story and plot story is is really a kind of i
it's a tale involving is a reality to it shared experience it's the story that illustrates something for us to story them it moves us plot is simply plot line grabbing things around so it comes out neatly are not meet the whatever but a structural thing the i think plotted heavily
plotted books are really liked for me like a guy like non-fiction it's an art is not art but as an art that you learn it's like detective stories stuff like that they're very very carefully plotted often brilliantly plotted you know brilliantly plotted but that's what you're reading the plot is what keeps him in the book see how he works out this puzzle is like
eating about a pub and that and no matter how much skill he brings to it or she brings to it
ah finally those characters even if they are given all the one for widely characteristics and all sorts of quirks they don't quite they aren't deeply felt by the rider there are simply constructions sometimes art for construction so that you can hardly tell them from alive organic
character i've just finished a book somebody thrust at me and i thought where the hell has this writer ben is it is marvelous stuff about world war one enough in a very powerful love affair
interests and i and my brother i guess how storm he'd read it and end up i saw i can't make up my mind whether this is really good or just normally skillful well at the end of the book it really unravel if it was plotted and the plot came roaring out and you simply it was very neat i saw
the construction but suddenly all the staging showed no author all the whole affair a but the writing is absolutely beautiful it's really artful writing but in my view this book is not a great art it could pass forward for an awful lot of it is wonderful it's called birdsong by numbered some
it looks like god is confusing you don't know quite what category to put it in because it's so skillfully so well so well written this man patrick o'brien right see tales lot of people like those are very well done for the characters really are beautiful constructions and this not what interests o'brien nor is it wouldn't who had interested the author birdsong
he i think he's interested in how the singers made an hour effects and i'm sure he's interested in his reader more than he is in his own clarity
but that's opinion had i'm sure i would get an argument is virtually every critic alive on all these things again don't trust my as the i i see it story and plot really is really the characters are probably the key thing you know are these real people that grow out of the author
improving the people of the other sex or are they gay skillful constructions i'm a paste in a little of this here and a little sex there and maybe a little bit of violence here and we need a little song so here at some carpentry that's not the way a novel should go
or be
conservation of
i have a
inspiration
i think is true i think you when you begin you have certain ideas for the characters you know you have this person of that person but if they're truly fully imagined do you have to grow into them
this character had has to in some way take you over you have to become that person in this trilogy for example mr watts mr watson's very difficult right about because he's apparently a killer a sociopath who behave more or less normally most the time and as a very able attractive person good looking
and how do i get into this mind how do i understand why he comes into this island where he's killed knowing that those men must be waiting for him what is in his head how did this happen and this happened there's so many kind of misuse i can't solve that until i'm really in him
just just as you can ah
i did a book in came on a and dialect and you can't really write that direct i don't believe until you speak it yourself you have to learn how to speak and then it comes naturally but if you're trying to remember how do they say this why you know and even if you're wrong even who if you're just simulating it if if it's felt this way you know you
have to the how to do it
has anybody got a copy of 'em gloss mantra over here i know there are a few around anybody have one in the room
i
yeah
last man river yeah oh here's what here's one as you are lifted up let me just stop
now you may not think this is as funny i hadn't have a predilection thank you for back country
rural black humor you know and this is a little passage by a man named spec daniels is a pretty terrible guy is a gator poacher he smuggled drugs is and everything he's got a cruel vicious and drunk and i'm a lot but he's funny
i think
as you i remember where it is
oh yeah he's talking about it i try to i'm still i'm always banging the environmental drum and i very very rare animal in the southwest florida is the american crocodile which has your nose little bigger than the alligator in carla
up more dangerous and potentially at least and but for a time there are enough of them around so you saw them in zoos and stuff and has actually if you ever go to sanibel island is a very big one and the ding darling bird reserve the as it's come in known as rather north of its range but for some reasons wandered in there
and this i hit this guy is talking about and he's east l poachers crocodiles alligators cruising it moves in this at this time of his life he's selling crocodiles to the of stuff
one time intelligent st augustine had a masood he paid me to hunt 'em up some crocs sure enough he shows up at my house at flamingo got a crocodile's i say sure thing i've got sixteen right out back only thing all he had out front was a pink cadillac what the hell you aim to holiday
in ice is well crocodile car that's where you're looking at why hail says i've got me a crock back here it goes twelve feet fill out a whole limousine twelve feet e l is i want that one now
so we jump on that crock and rattling around roll 'em up a new ball going to hump some way into the trunk net old tale whack that cadillac and lick that wrung out like a dank mule and a tin the stall i fling the smaller ones in the backseat they hit that velveteen just snap it and grabbing and this croc fancier don't mind one little bit take off for st augustine bump in the
round with a load of crocs he's got in there after big ol ugly cloud of smoke right my yard next time you showed up he bought him a hen crocodile and coffee and out krakatoa but he bought him a hand grondona i had a big hump on our shoulders because a coconut said that i don't look so good my friend i'll give you ten down and twenty five on
top she goes to weeks so he sent a letter with no money in it notified me she had up denied well the next year as passes through st augustine drop in the cm and then she was a hump dog crocodile star the show
so how has my mind that sure is a pretty little and you got in there
when you fell as know some diurnal if i went and hurt his feelings
cause he hollers out no no no that ain't your pretty little hand
ain't heard all spec nodejs more that's the way we left it because she didn't have no pedigree in an oven
he shook his head over life's vicissitudes that fellows your had him a good head for the croc businesses what it was that's how you get you one of them cadillacs iraq
help
well i love that kind of stuff and but i couldn't i couldn't write it if i couldn't and i can i do i just if i go down there and i hear a few sentences that seven i'm talking the same way they i'm kind of like a chameleon it's awful but go to england i had a sort of british accent
but you you do have to learn that that language and if you don't if you don't think you know i don't write dialect as you're just infuriate your reader most may direct even if it's well done that hate it for toward to get a lot of flak for for dialogue people only even like to read huck finn one of two maybe two great american
masterpieces or huck finn and moby dick but huck finn great great book and are people won't read it just because of the dial
probably they'll have they'll change all that their pipe the pc groups will take over and they'll put i have to put all our gyms speech back into straight and a harvard english islam but
pity
a passage important too
oh yeah know him
well this is different this is completely different came on and dialect is is really shaw syrian his old shall see in english and rhythms are completely different these people that a lot of the have of their law black and embodies an indian is a little bit of english as a little better but who knows what and they're very mixed in ca
color and in background but they all have this this our ancient english the dumb
you know what i'm going to do norm and i'm going to not do that
i'm in the swamp mood
hey and also i haven't done it for so long one time i i am i had it reading with truman capote he and capote he had that old chestnut that he always did as call a christmas story and it was so cinematic have a truman video
and i had to follow that act
and i read from far tortuga and i had to have about six glasses of wine to get trying to get cranked up for and i let fly i risked everything and it somehow it it came out right that like remembering a language at all
but sometimes it doesn't and it's very hard to mix it up
so i'm a cop out
anybody else
yeah
i
aren't you well
i get to the standing limited
a experimental
reach that was hurry
and if if you want to talk about right
you are
this baby really i'm at this question i i get asked kind of a lot
and i'm always makes me slightly uncomfortable because it's my my response seems arrogant i mean i was a terrific reader is a kid i read everything as down the library all the time i can remember reading books up saying to high on when when writers would would tap into some little truth in every way recognize and old ladies that them
you know that i mean that goes as how far i am yellow slip some cards and all that stuff
and i read certainly all augustus gave an old comrade and i think those two if i had to say with my influence would be a be those two writers but i don't see it in my writing and i don't think as far as i can see is a detectable and enough at my writing and so my original
it's just writing but i don't see some people you can clearly see faulkner hemingway or wherever it may be and i don't i don't and unjust may be that i'm don't know how much i stolen it's all blurred together but i don't know really who influenced me
rick

your daughter
him
and ah
he said from here to be a great powers
somehow
buddhism or
fiction
even in houses
he not
yeah
not computer and western
darwin
hello lady murasaki
the origin
yeah you're ever going anywhere socket
anymore of now more
yeah
now as were describing it
it's very western well i think it is i think the tradition of the modern novel goes back to know sixteenth seventeenth century england richardson people like that but dumb
i think the tail telling goes back for ever and the novelists and be the form that we put it in used to be an epic poems a narrative poems with enormous language go back a thousand years you know in the novel is the form we we have then we adapted for tortuga really the former fighter to the i used a screenplay i didn't accept the eliminated
all the indication of who was speaking
but it was really is it's sort of and that's where they then came in i just used
the stairs sparse description adjust the thing itself again not that look like something there is one symbol cr similarly that snuck into it and i said for tortuga an island like a memory and the ocean emptiness and that that one slip by night my thing
and somebody else said they found another
doubt very many and what i really wanted was to get with you soon as you put it in a similar you're getting intellectual process and now you're getting something between you and the thing itself so i would just say that from underneath the galley for example on the ship and little separate galley shack on the ship just no beat up you know kind of thing and i described
the antenna the antenna i rather have a cockroach coming out in the so trade when in the so fierce and caribbean light and these two goals things coming out tasting hearing you know whatever they do is extraordinary delicate and apparatus and
it's coming out there which is that need why garnish that what it looks like so i say like a radio tower you know i mean all you do is make crashing down i described the a old diesel drums of the decks diesel fuel on the deck and that and they have well as you know drums have a little rim around the top and they collect
rainwater the thing is never straight up in general pool rainwater i just described as shivering of the rainwater in the on the oil drum because of the ships motor
or whatever and just say there was a lot a line of short migrant migrating shorebirds the distance i just wanted these residences of the things around there are oblivious to this man's faith is men are sailing towards their doom i don't know what of course but there is a swirled still guy on vibrations and
cock roaches and you know just just that and not say they looked like or or like or anything
so i don't know that's not buddhist writing and it doesn't really answer your question is this buddhists
ah but i don't know i don't use yeah no i think that the people say things like that at the same ones who say that buddhism as fatalistic
you know addison fatalistic buddhism accepts what is in that moment is it and you can't do anything about anything that's passed so to that degree you can say this is fatalism but then you are free in the next moment to do something about it to take care of that as we say
so so that idea that buddhism is fatalistic is there is completely wrong system is misapprehension of what it is
it is
no

seven years now

i will i thought i was taking off the restraints in a way i thought i was doing exactly the opposite
yeah because it by eliminate the speakers the thing is if he was open out i left whitespace everywhere yeah i trying to get away from the the shackles of the conventional novel and
in
did you do it
dan berger
well i actually i would like to try it again it was easiest do it with the ship because you have a confined stage and you have a small company of men and other people come and go but mainly it's a small group so that the reader can follow it the reader can follow it easily anyway after thirty page
years afford to our first thirty pages maybe a little confusing because you never seen anything like that before but after that you are so many clues now i had this theory and i think it really is true especially among a very simple uneducated men
everybody and we do too but ours may be more subtle we have our life song we really do we have our solemn time and i found that these men were singing that their own song over and over and over again and so that almost from the intonation you can tell who's talking and by this time you know them i put in a ship's manifest
so you know all their names and their age and tried to use the ship's manifest as a device for identifying the characters as all kinds of hints and i make it very easy for the reader in the beginning but after that you're kind of on your own is that is how
clearly you seen the characters that makes it possible well as you know i mean people either hate that book or they love it but
oh i don't think answer your question by have an the question properly the last ten questions

you're saying do i see the results of my work and positive results on biodiversity and so

yeah i think i'm probably the least qualified person to answer that
i like to think this put it that way that dumb and had some educational value i know the other people tell me those books have had that this book wildlife in america was really it was the first book of the modern conservation movement it was even in the company years before rachel carson who was very very significant
indeed so i'd like to think that book had some effect and and other books too maybe in drawing kids and to nature study i think this been effects like that you know pointing up animals that are disappearing or whatever
but to say that we are winning this war i'm afraid i'd have to say we are not real there are lots of local victories are certain birds they really come back if you check the old list and wildlife in america of the threatened species will see that many of those birds like the brown pelican and but the peregrine falcon a number them have come back
but a number of others of course on way down
i'm so at last night somebody came up and said to you seem to be a little gloomy about the future of the world but it would she real feeling i so how much do you want to hear
and i don't read don't want to get into that to honor
i think we i think we have to fight i think we have to go down fighting for every species every whatever we have to fight to educate people we have to fight to get people elected who are have some sort of vision
you know we cannot see some of the corporations actually are coming around one of you here is working with the told me i was very pleased to hear that working with educating the corporate leaders because they need education worse than anybody
joseph kennedy who was a a boundary a scoundrel a thief and a crook from everything we can hear about him the president's for offer use a real rapscallion ah the sky they did say one great thing for which she should be honored he said the brain of the american businessman is the most overrated commodity
that and he should know
a but there are some businessmen who are really great i mean they really are trying to lead it back in the other way it and i think it'll pay off i think it's the best financial investment they can make a truly do i think the environment i had a chance to talk to secretary bob at last year old and i said you know
your job is the least sixty job and the cabinet i guess but what you decide here
it's going to be fifty years from now we far more important than any decision taken by the secretary of state or any of the other people your these decisions are really going to hurt or help our country
i truly feel that i think the environment is it has been for a long time really the feel that young people would be most excited and and helpful to go into i think it's gonna be a more and more and more we have no choice that has to become huge cleaning up has to become huge all of the
related disciplines
oh yeah
ah
just got farming
he that in nashua
character on watching one

to me he the other component air safety so caught up in similar culture and as a sense of not just lot more my ten file hosting the how can i possibly make ten phone has been have a jam
sakura i just i mean people have to be yes because it is a certain investment time i mean if you're going to help you have to be generous for your time it's really true i think people are people who let other people go to their death really because it was too much trouble
you know it's very easy to further remove you know you read the papers two hundred and fifty people die in a japanese very on the honored sea of japan
you don't have much of a emotional response but suppose you use your imagination suppose you think of that very overturning and two hundred and fifty people fighting for their lives hysterically the nurse you think this was hannah errands point and then you think than your imagination starts going and then you can relate to these feel otherwise it is
simply a statistic on the page and we very easily brushed off we don't contribute to this are we don't do that you know we can't we and we cut we can't be a sort of alive nerve all the time you can't do you have to to certain extent you couldn't be a state cop and not develop a terrific callousness about blood and gore and
fear and screaming you gotta have a a very strong stomach and is very that you do because otherwise you couldn't do your job doctors surgeons the same so i don't mean that we should all be you know doing that but you see how easily we do turn off our imaginations and how he
easy it is under those circumstances not to take the trouble to to help even nothing much closer to home you know at it and you're quite right that is the other side of them now
right
i think it's a decision i think it's a decision on each for each individual's part but education certainly well i mean you haven't i don't think i've ever seen a kid if you take them out and show them animals and stuff was fascinated kids love animals and they horrified at the idea of animals my go state
they really are and kids are easily trained not to litter
you know and we do it in i know and admire his zendo during the sambal that work practice you know we always do if this if it's wintertime there's no work to be done around the zendo
i i send everybody out on the road and the all i do is pick up litter all the way down toward the ocean and back along the roads and they get more garbage bags in a way to go and you know that's an awful lot more effective than going to people saying you pig on body will y u littering the beach your most people really don't
want to do those kind of things and if they see somebody cleaning up after him then you get as you get ashamed what is it people really do have auto race changing story just happen videotape i wish you'd explain it i'm i'm a little paranoid no doubt over suspicious but
i i was in the in the airport whereas someone used to know someplace and i was waiting for the plane and they announced the plane people started to i thought well i'll check out the men's room for a second here for go on plane and i stood up to quit be and i have this little pair of rather expensive glasses and iowa anyway but i couldn't find him or her
women
you know and i rushed back to i've been sitting i looked under the seat nothing there was a woman thing i said you see anybody a pair of glasses or you see any my pick she's said yes up somebody picked up a patent on a pair of glasses that was there so i rushed to the counter the it any by turned my glasses know are three counters nine attendance also go to the last found
you know about the loss of fat and fill out the forms that i said i'm getting on this plane if i don't hurry up i won't get on well i've cited bolt for the plan on the plane i was got depressed about this stupid loss i thought well hey all these people on this plane were in that same waiting area surely one of them and give me a
clue that at least i can put on my form when i sent it into american and you know so i had the steward announce
has anybody on the airplane did you happen to see a pair of glasses in the waiting area and i stood up and nice looking old guys standing up there between the person economy combined like a hopefully are not a hand went up
at all as to bat so i went back to my seat five minutes later
i hear the call bell go
five minutes later
and i don't even notice it because i didn't the getting to me somebody wanted a kleenex with them ah steward comes running down the aisle waiting my glasses
and the guy who had him was in first class
why didn't the tournament why did he wait five minutes before answering this plea
what was going on there
why did i tell the story and i will compete in off
hey there was a point but it was a point in there somewhere
what
as i'm afraid i think for want of a better solution this person recognize their hobbies that they're sitting in first class so this makes a little bit more shameful they have the money to paper for his class which is probably the worst by an american today
you know how but they also know and expensive frame when they see one as you know where those wear glasses those frames on the little gases which i
ah are outrageously high and then they thought hey i need a new pair of glasses august punch the frames lenses are lesson a frame is worth money
can be pretty cheesy but i'm afraid i don't see any other action and then
i'll also here's another clue the stewart told me it was man but the woman had the place told me it was a woman who picked them up which suggests that those two together one up
and one i've worked on the conscience of the other
what i'm at a more of a conscience and the other and took them five minutes to straighten it out and see of hassling up the first class and
i don't know you've got a better is if you've got a better solution i'd be happy to help it
right
he added
i can tell as and
the
i just get all around like me and laughed
yeah
feeling that anything that you last
yeah i'll get me
get a little
okay i'll tell you i could you see it's little bit like i wrote somewhere about sherpa people of all peoples i've met on earth sherpa and the inuit eskimo people so-called her have an extraordinary philosophy and is totally generous is totally generous they just give everything
you know they just like that and they don't and shippers you know they may have clients who are extremely rude and inconsiderate and they don't it doesn't bother them they are loyal not to the client they're loyal to their job they just do it because that's who they are as their training as buddhist as training as sharp as and
and not serving you they're serving the dignity of their own job and that lead absolutely liberate them from
in honor spit in that guy's supper some you know they they are they don't have to do anything like that and am
i think that's the way we must be we must be loyal to our planet we must be loyal to our idea or notion of what is right our bring things into balance and the and the people i'm thinking of are those people who are with robert falcon scott coming back from the south pole i thought about the milan ice in antarctica a few weeks ago
these guys really they got to within eighteen miles with their depot or that could get food but they knew they were and weren't going to make it and they never complained they never talked i wrote in their journals as with all the journals were found with the bodies we know exactly what they're thinking and doing and writing last notes to their families wives and children and stuff but
they also dive a clear even though wrong after they knew they were doomed they kept on going that they felt was their obligation they've been financed by the royal geographic society and i felt hey we we are not permitted to give up and were not permitted to complain because we
take responsibility nobody made us go to the southpaw
and i'd i think in a way that's the way we kind of a much less on scarier dramatic way we have to think about it i think we have to keep right on going to fight for leonard peltier and the wildlife and the whole works i won't go into what my feelings about how unless return it around and i say our leadership
and are all you and who we put an office and everything we're not going to change it or not on a success course here things are happening very fast we don't even understand what's happening we're doing so much damage but that doesn't mean we should give up for your own sensors of your own fulfillment of your even your buddha nature
on can say have your own being spontaneously moment after moment taking care of ethics as our training and we take care of the earth to us we retract down
but
part of that is educating your kids other people's kids spreading this because that's what i'll turn it around
ah
never
it's not because it's not because i i will not be i would more on for congress i like to be a benefits of dictator for by year
have you know i could never run for congress i've got i'm a i'm a lefty long standing
been divorced i use lot of drugs in the sixties
come on i be shot out the saddle but today

congress and he brought socialist and even really like advice
yeah yeah everything that you would be very time
you know in vermont vermont's real cranky state is only took i think the two states in the country where a guy a guy know i know you talking about and he can be elected vermont and minnesota
and those are the only two i think you know i know the good work anywhere else
yeah
the sure sure yeah amortized three
okay
yeah let's take a break and then more than forty five
i never got to your question
i will
not knowing how to do not ask an hour going to britain