This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Somehow or another, there was a sign put up outside the office and then outside the dining room that we were having a dormitok. All day long, Naomi's been saying, but there is a Dharma talk. But really, we both knew from the very beginning that it's a poetry presentation. But to those of you who are thirsting for the Dharma, there'll be an instant Dharma event.

[01:01]

I've heard it said that those who are ready will get enlightened in this next 90 seconds. It could be you. And who decides if it is or it isn't? You do. And how do you make that decision? By how you engage in this coming proposition. And here's the proposition. Yeah? Somehow or another, given the nature of human consciousness, we think that there's something mysterious, miraculous, annoying, and complex within us called me. It's just a proposition that we've made up. So what if, instead of that,

[02:04]

we said, all of this is me. And this little part that I've been clutching to so carefully is really quite trivial. And then if I want to get in touch with the fuller me, I need to listen and look and feel and touch and smell all of this. So are you feeling like you're almost halfway enlightened yet? Okay. So just to nugget the other halfway, so if you could sit. Now don't get all serious. That's not going to help. That's probably more the little me that's thinking, uh-oh, am I going to lose my pivotal role in all of this?

[03:07]

Night sky that's glimmering in through that light up there. There's 18 billion light years of space up there. Under our feet there's a molten core to this cute little green and blue planet. There's this flow of air that becomes breath and becomes air again. For goodness sakes, we're 46% microbes that are hitching a ride on this version of me. Just sit

[04:12]

and marvel at the whole proposition. How amazing that I so casually say me. How amazing this body throbs with life. This mind with its hundred billion synapses is buzzing furiously. What if for a few outrageous moments in brass agenda of me was set aside and the touching and the feeling of being alive and the seeing and the hearing

[05:29]

Thank you. And if you want a repeat performance, it happens every morning and evening after we hit that wooden board in the Zendo. So. Wouldn't you all be happy if you just carried on? I would be so happy. It's my great honor and delight to introduce Naomi. Naomi's a true paradox. If you look at her long, illustrious list of accolades, you would expect a person of great self-importance of some sense of, look at me, I'm so special. None of that seems to have stopped Naomi from just being a passionate observer of life, a person who's utterly intrigued by the human experience and who delights in meeting and befriending everyone.

[07:28]

the poetry that comes from it carries all that and so much more. So, without further ado. You're welcome, Naomi. Thank you all for coming down here under the guise of experiencing a Dharma talk in the dark this evening. I feel very guilty because I'm not sure You'd all come if it said poetry reading. See, nodding heads, nodding heads. It's such a pleasure to be here. If I could have known in 1968 and 69, when I was cooking in a natural foods restaurant in Texas, San Antonio, where the Tassajara bread book stood before us all on a little altar of its own, I didn't make the bread, but I saw that book every day, that there would someday be a chance to be part of this community, even one week every year.

[08:34]

I would have just been amazed. It's been such a pleasure to come here and meet so many of you who are wonderful observers, thinkers, writers. Thanks to all of you here at Tassajara who make us feel at home, those of us who come and go quickly in the larger picture of things. Your graciousness, your welcome, is unlike anything any of us ever experience anywhere. So thank you for that kindness. I do think that coming to a place like Tassahari, even one week a year, can fortify us, nourish us for the entire rest of the year. And we all feel very grateful to be here together with you. So I'll read just a few things and maybe we can get back to the Dharma talk. You are the Dharma talk. This is a new poem called To Sam Maloof's Armchair, which he made in 1984.

[09:40]

Did anyone in the room ever know Sam Maloof since he did live in California? And he only died a few years ago. No one? His work? You knew his work, right. Well, I knew his work through pictures of his work and articles about him, but this chair lives in the Dallas Museum now. Sam, what if we could sit in your chair an entire day, feel its gleaming grace pervade our skin and thoughts? Would we be changed? Your walnut found a sheen deeper than memories of women and men. You used hand tools like clean flow. When you dove wholeheartedly into the slowness of labor's long elegance, perfection grew. But you called yourself a woodworker because it was an honest word.

[10:45]

The boy Sam spoke Spanish and Arabic before English, lived among California fruit trees, knew eight brothers and sisters. People say you had elegant script, were always generous, would describe to anyone how you did what you did. A craftsman of soul, shaping low-slung arms, a sitter might lean legs over, still feeling comfortable, calm. Even your hinges were wood. No dazzle, no frills. You kept shaping tables, shelves, this honorable chair we could vote for repeatedly. Timeless presence, dissolving gloom. We close our eyes, try to live in your room. He wanted people to feel comfortable in anything.

[11:50]

Don't let this worry you. We're not worried. I just did it to make Paul think I had a lot of plans. In the introduction to my new book called Voices in the Air, Poems for Listeners, and I consider you all possibly the best listeners anywhere, by nature, being here, I'd like to read a little section from the introduction. Not so long ago, we were never checking anything in our hands, scrolling down, pecking with a finger, obsessively tuning in. My entire childhood did not involve a single deletion. These are relatively new acts on earth. In those archaic but still vivid days, There might be a meandering walk into trees, an all-day bike ride, a backyard picnic, a gaze into a stream, a plunge into a sunset, a conversation with pines, a dig in the dirt to find our messages.

[13:06]

When we got home, there was nothing to check or catch up on. No one speaking to us in our absence. Recently, when I had the honor of visiting Yokohama International School in Japan to conduct poetry workshops, student Juna Hewitt taught me an important word, yutori, life space. She listed various interpretations for its meaning, arriving early so you don't have to rush, giving yourself room to make a mistake, Starting a diet, but not beating yourself up if you eat a cookie after you started it. Giving yourself the possibility of succeeding. Several boys in another class defined the word as when the cord for your phone is long enough to reach the wall socket. Juna said she felt that reading and writing poetry gives us more yutori, a place to stand back

[14:14]

to contemplate what we are living and experiencing. More spaciousness in being. More room in which to listen. I love this. It was the best word I learned all year. Not that sense of being nibbled up as if message minnows surround us at all moments, nipping, nipping at our edges. Then there's another part, and then I just wanted to read this part to you. Can we go outside and listen? In 1927, Freya Stark, an English writer born in Paris in 1893, who had become known for her astonishing travels through even the most remote parts of the Middle East, often dressed as a man, paused for a picnic near some Roman ruins outside Damascus. She wrote, We ate our food, with little clouds of Roman sand blown off the hewn stones and thought of the fragility of things.

[15:18]

Near Baghdad, she wrote, in the morning, all is peace, and all went out to pasture. The camels, looking as if they felt that their walk is a religious ceremony, went further afield. They are comparatively independent, needing to drink only once in four days. The sheep and goats stayed nearer. And when they had all gone and melted invisibly into the desert face, the empty, luminous peace again descended, lying round us in light and air and silence for the rest of the day. Freya Stark's light and air and silence feel palpable in her paragraphs. Her respect for people unlike herself, her fascination with worlds very different from the European ones she had grown up in, yet fully recognizable in their humanity and hope, heartens me when my own time feels too odd to bear.

[16:21]

Her curious voice traveling through the air is more comforting than people currently claiming power, demanding recognition, trying to make others feel as if they don't belong. Literature gives us a home in bigger times. Well, that's just a little part of the introduction, and then just a few poems from the book. Well, these days I say to kids or teachers or classes, anyone really, if you want to write and you're having trouble beginning, just answer one of the emails in your inbox in a poem form, and that might get you going again. To manage. She writes to me, I can't sleep because I'm 17. Sometimes I lie awake thinking I didn't even clean my room yet. That's where her real email ended.

[17:24]

And soon I will be 25 and a failure. And when I am 50, I write her back slowly, slow, clean one drawer, arrange words on a page, Let them find one another, find you. Trust they might know something. You aren't living the whole thing at once. That's what a minute said to an hour. Without me, you are nothing. Well, here's a poem for Paul and his dear friend Frank Liddy of Belfast, which I don't think... you've ever even heard. So it's fairly brazen to put poems in books to people and not even let them see the poem in advance. But I think this poem gives a very clear suggestion of why we need Dharma talks regularly.

[18:27]

Belfast. I'm attached to everything. Things that aren't mine. Places that aren't mine. Nothing is mine. Fingers feeling for a switch in the dark, knowing how a knob turns or sticks after only two days. Click of the lock. Attached to swerves, surprise, new corners. Riding an elevator to the seventh floor of the old linen mill. Meeting artists simply by knocking on their doors. Tell again. What was all that violence for? Old Belfast. I'm attached to your red brick, peaks and pitches, compact neighborhoods, green slopes behind. They aren't mine. Haunting yellow cranes at the Titanic shipyard, gray slate stones on the beach.

[19:32]

We can see Scotland, also not mine, but now I'm so attached to everything I almost doubled in size. Attached to Strandilis Road, swans, swifts, rivers, the glorious face of Queen's University. You're school, right? We could start over, everything over. New world, new map, new life. And the baked potato with cheese and bread beans I kept hearing about. There is more. There is more. There is more. Sorry. This has a John Muir quote at the top. The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark. Hummingbird.

[20:34]

Hummingbird. Lyda Rose asked, are you a grown-up? The most flattering question of my adult life. She darted around me like a hummingbird, knotted in gauzy pink scarves, raining time into my hair. There, on the brink of summer, all summers blurred. No, I said, I don't think so. I don't want to be. Where are you then? Her dog snored by the couch, little sister dozed on a pillow. When her mom came home, we'd drink hot tea, talk about our dead fathers, and cry. I think of a turtle, I said, hibernating, and a mouse in the moss, and sometimes a hummock bird like you. She jumped on my stomach then, asked if I'd ever worn a tutu,

[21:35]

Like the frayed pink one, she favored the whole spring. No, not that. I have a shovel, though, I said, for digging in the garden every night before dark, and a small piano like yours that pretends to be a harpsichord. And I really love my broom. Twilight. Victor, the taxi driver, says, I love this time of day. This is when I say, never want to die. Want to be here forever. Oh, maybe it will be possible. In the shaggy heads of trees that barely felt us walking beneath them. The corners we turn so often. Broken pavements, cracks, and signatures. Daniel Lozano, 1962.

[22:38]

All the days we entered thoughtlessly, forgetting to turn our heads or bow to the vine, finally making it over the fence. Dangling blossom, orange cup of joy, ephemeral as we were here, imagining our deep roots. People do not pass away. They die and then they stay. And this is a poem actually from last summer at Tassahara for Aziz. I had not noticed the delicate yellow flower, strikingly thin petals, like a man with many hopes or a woman with many dreams.

[23:40]

The center, almost a tiny hive, ants could crawl in and out of if they wished. Had not noticed the profusion of flowers on the path, had not stooped to absorb the silent glory of many-petaled yellow or remembered the freshness of my father's collar for some years now. The rush of anticipation circling his mourning self despite so much hard history and searing news. Who can help us? Yellow beam, spiral sunshine, legacy. And this is from the Women's Museum of Art in Washington. There's a painting I've stared at many times by Rosa Bon Dieu, painted in 1865, and it's called Sheep by the Sea.

[24:41]

The column of your wool, rounded, resting postures, hooves tucked under. Behind you, roiling waves pound, white caps against stones. Your eyes had been closed for 148 years. but you seem not to fear what is coming. You curl in repose, pink velvet of ears echoing the pink tips of grasses. People have always been shepherds for sheep, but I'd like to let you lead. Quiet depth, a measured gentleness, here in a museum in Washington, D.C. A few years ago we had a memorial for Peter Matheson here. And Peter was a long-time practitioner of Zen.

[25:50]

He saw Zen and had a Zen dough on his property on Long Island. He came to Texas regularly because of the bird migration patterns across Texas, and he loved to go to different spots. simply for viewing. And I would have to say of all the writers my husband and I have ever met or had the honor of spending time with, he was probably the most humble and the funniest. Wardler Woods, for Peter. Never too proud to tip his head back, to gaze, look beyond. Something nesting in leaves, unseen, Presence on a boulder beside water. Single strong leg. Fine if it took a long time to walk there. Better if it took time. He knew the names of every warbler stitched inside his skin.

[26:52]

The seven eagles, graceful cranes. He followed them to tuck away forests and creeks. Could see a slightest flicker of movement. Nesting memory. How the world was once. would never be again. He could stand under skies for hours, never weary of the habits, never tire. When did humans equal this glory? Glory of feather and snippet. Glory of the rangeless distances, abundant glide. When did humans soar so high? He used to trick people and say, oh, come on, let's just drive down to Mitchell Lake Preserve one more time today. Then we'll just stay an hour. Then seven hours later, you're still there. And he wouldn't let go.

[27:53]

People followed him there. And one time when we were leaving Tassauera, maybe five years ago, we heard the news on the... strange-sounding radio about Maya Angelou's death. And also, the next day in the San Francisco newspaper were details about her life in San Francisco, which I had never known about, never heard about. But her best friends lived in San Antonio. A wonderful couple named Erin Netta and Joan Pierce, who've been very active in civil rights work. in the United States for many, many, many years. And so Maya would come to town regularly to visit her friends. And so all the writers in our town got to have dinner with her multiple times. And sometimes we would ask her counsel about things happening in the news. And that's where the ending of this poem comes from. But the beginning comes from the story I learned after she died.

[28:58]

Grab a tooth pillow. And I just saw it. her words engraved in a building in San Francisco, if you truly care for someone in this life, you can say you have succeeded. Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel, Maya. Maya loved the jingle of the massive key ring carried by cable car conductors. First woman in the San Francisco trolley uniform, She liked the shiny buttons on the jacket, appreciated the swoops and dips of the roots, sharp curves, corners, bustling avenues, clinking coin dispenser latched to her belt. She'd be a conductor all her life, write and talk, take people everywhere out of their tight little rooms. And if anyone told her they were going to Gloomy Street, she'd say, what?

[30:00]

Lift those eyes. Take a look at the scene to your right. Buildings full of mysteries. Schools crackling with joy. Open porches. Watch the world whirl by. All we're given without having to own. And shake that gloom right out of your system. Hope is the only drink you need to be drinking. Jingle, jingle, step right up. And she said the Hope line with a big bottle of open whiskey on the table. So it seemed funnier than it might have. Hope is the only drink that... Think a few more. So a few years ago, I was at UVA in Charlottesville. And someone told me about some incredible Dolly Madison letters that existed in the archive there.

[31:05]

And they identified them by dates and how to look for them. And they just said, it's a perspective about American history. You have read, so don't get those letters and read them. So I got up there and they had a little feature for it, like a cafe with a daily special. It said, featured today, 50 handwritten letters by Langston Hughes. So Dalton went right out of my mind and I requested those Langston letters. And they were amazing because he was such an encourager, sort of the way Maya Angelou was an encourager to others. A lot of them were simply letters to people who had apparently written him and sent their writing and then asked his advice. And so somehow these letters were collected This is Train Across Texas for Langston News. Langston, what did Texas look like back then? Where were you going?

[32:06]

From your seat on the train, a small table, you encouraged your pen pals, Tim and Baltimore sisters, who had shared their writing with you and no one else. Sure you can do it. You are doing it. sent them gloriously handwritten black ink letters, sentences trailing across pages on neat tracks, drew pictures in margins, hills outside the window, a dining car waiter with a white towel folded over his arm. You had time on your beautiful ride, so much space to stare into, horizons of thinking. I believe in you. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You knew what it was to be a busboy, wipe tables, contemplate crusts, drag some tea in a cup. Urging your penthouse to remember their dreams, whatever shape they might be. You were ready for the next installment.

[33:11]

There were ways to get anywhere you wanted to go, if you really wanted to go. And the land opened up in front of you, the long land and years in which he would be writing to every one of us every day. There's an effort right now in Harlem to save Langston Hughes' house and make it a writing space, a gathering space for young writers. The writer, Renee Watson, is in charge of it. It's a beautiful project. In transit. I mail the package to myself. It never arrived. Months later, wondering what it contained. The package was oversized. I paid extra. Nailed it from a place under trees. Surely shade and sunlight was in that package. Nailed it from a place compassionate to refugees.

[34:13]

I opened envelopes inside the package. Poems from kind students hoping for response. How do we answer? without knowing who they were or what they said. This is why you must smile at everyone living in debt everywhere you go. You have no idea what has been lost in transit. For people who do jobs well for long periods of time, our friend Bill, I'll read this for you tonight. Maybe you'll go find her and see how she's doing. This was a story I read about someone named Mary Endo in the Honolulu Star Advertiser.

[35:18]

It's called Barbershop. Mary of Kalihi is closing down. Today, her last, after 62 years of trimming hair, soaping necks. Mary, with the pink and white Kennedy-striped on it, who gives an opinion, no topic taboo. A man is quoted, she was the one person in my life I could always talk to. Mary, you could count on. 62 years, hardly a drop in the shaving mug Bring her a thank you, bigger than Honolulu. Bring her a love. Your whole life she was in here, now vanished by a landlord you would personally like to shear. What else will make up in this spot? It's just a little shock.

[36:20]

Mary, at 91, is taking it in stride. She'll get dressed next Monday as usual. but doesn't know where she'll go. When you swing the door, she's cutting a guy's hair on her last day, wearing a ruffled pink apron, her own hair perfectly slimed. She looks quizzical when you hand over the newspaper feature and one giant red rose. Guy says, see, Mary, everybody loves you, even strangers. Four chairs of people waiting. Regulars lined up for a last conversation. Last clip. What is the size of this farewell? Mary, Mary, you have such a strong name. Let me read one more.

[37:30]

For all the children in the world who were forced to live with circumstances made by those adults that Light a Rose was curious about. I've always been haunted by them, traveling in many countries, many kids. who come from somewhere else, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. I was just with a boy in Dubai, his name was Sufyan, and he said every day he wakes up in his house in Syria, lost, confused. What is this life? So, doing so, Skype visits with an incredible bunch of reading and writing kids, teenagers in Gaza, and they're the least complaining people I've ever met. They love stories.

[38:39]

They want stories. They want other people's stories. Before I was in Gaza, I was a boy, and my homework was missing. Paper with numbers on it, stacked in line, I was looking for my piece of paper, proud of this plus that, then multiplying, not remembering if I had left it on the table after showing to my uncle or the shelf after combing my hair, but it was still somewhere. And I was going to find it and turn it in, make my teacher happy, make her say my name to the whole class before everything got subtracted from me, even my uncle. Even my teacher, even the best math student, and his baby sister who couldn't talk yet. And now, I would do anything for a problem I could solve. It's so wonderful to be away from the world threatening me.

[39:54]

And hold all the people And I think we all appreciated this here a little more. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you, Paul Tyler. We have a few minutes. Would you want to answer a few questions? Sure. Okay. Or take answers. We do take answers. Okay. You can give us the answer, and we'll give you the question. Or the question, and then we'll. And thanks to all the wonderful people in our group this week for your words, your writing, and your inspiration. Your risk-taking. Any questions? creative process when you're traveling or whether it's in San Antonio or anywhere, are you jotting things down in a notebook?

[41:05]

Or are you trying to remember things as you go? Are you speaking to a... Just jotting them down. Just always jotting them down. And then, you know, usually fill about one of these a week. And then just jotting them down. And then right now I have a stack of this many that I want to look through in July and August. I've always done that all my life. And do you want to describe your daily process when you're home? At home, I've always been a morning writer and like to get off and write first thing. It doesn't have to be, you know, three hours. It could be 30 minutes if you don't have to go work or something. Just the regularity of it, I think. causes it to happen more and being processed more. There's never been a dearth of things to take notes about.

[42:10]

And sometimes the notes lead you to a better silence in your day, and sometimes they lead you to different kinds of thinking in your day. But I think by a regular practice of writing things down, and not giving yourself, not having a weight of it needs to be good, whatever that is, or it needs to be something you could share, whatever that is, just brighten things down. The more things you have probably been to, you're worried. So then, we go back and there are times when you can take the craft and work with them. I'm working with you. You see? Pardon? You see? Yes, re-scene, re-scene. It's great to revise because you have something to work with. You have something on the page to move around. Do you give your poems to anybody besides your editor?

[43:17]

I'm in a writing group that meets once a month and whenever I'm in town I have to go and we all share one poem. on an evening and talk about each other's poems quickly. Sometimes I share them with my husband, but I don't usually share a whole lot, but I was good. Thank you. It's never been a precious activity, it's just been a common normal activity to me since I was a child. I started doing it at six, I started sending poems out at seven. Because of the librarian in our elementary school in Ferguson, Missouri, who told me, people could do that. You could send your poems to magazines. And there were children's magazines who would accept, who would open an envelope from a child and read your poems. And I thought, really? It's fantastic. And I used to hold in my mind, you could have a frizz in California.

[44:19]

I always say in California because I've never been here, that you've never even met and they could read your poem. That was something online when I was seven, eight. You manage your technology use and not getting distracted by that? Well, that's a great question. Managing technology use is interesting for all of us. I like being here without having any of it. And I like to take breaks from it. And, you know, have whole days when I don't touch it at home. And just, you know, since I grew up, the majority of my life, I feel like I really didn't use it. I didn't have it. So just to go back to those old, more spacious ways of not being obsessive about messages and worrying that if you don't answer your messages today, then buy it. two days from now you'll have too many and where will you begin?

[45:21]

Just like the girl in the poems managed. If I don't clean my room, what will become of me? The inbox becomes your room, I guess. And looking things up, you know, I'm fascinated by the wealth of possibility in terms of looking things up. Someone mentions an artist you've never heard of, a film you've never heard of, and the fact that you can look it up now and get information, that to me seems... an enormous treat of technology. But maybe our lives are becoming too easy in that way. We have to balance it. I still want to be a person who goes to the library and picks up a book I never heard of before and checks it out. I worry about libraries just losing their friends because everybody's doing different things. But The libraries tell me their readership is up, so that's good. In a lot of places, they say there's kind of a counter wave of people using libraries to kind of slow themselves down and have the tactile experience of picking lots of books on shelves looking at them.

[46:37]

But it's always a challenge, not getting lost in there, like a magnet hole for you. Even though you write about or you are in places that are difficult, I always appreciate the lightness and the life you bring to it. But I was wondering, is there anything that's sort of off the table for you to write about or anything you've ever tried to write about and just couldn't? That's an interesting question. Anything off the table. been interested in writing about romantic love. I just hoped to have a little bit. But it didn't slip to me ever like a topic that I wanted to write about. So for me, that would not have been something I really wanted to write about, ever. Not because I'm shy about it, but it just didn't seem like something to write about.

[47:45]

And there are plenty of things you can read. I have no problems whatsoever writing about politics right now. I think we should. But I don't always have a taste for it because it's so disgusting. So you don't want to, it's like trenching yourself in a toxic brew sometimes. You'd rather think about the children you've been spending time with. You'd rather write about them and how amazing they are. I spent a whole day recently with mostly kids from Afghanistan and Rwanda, and I realized, and other countries too, but in San Antonio, the schools where these kids are attending and have beautiful programs for these kids, they have stopped using the word refugee, which interested me. Now they already use newcomers. My father always identified as a Palestinian refugee. And yet, to me, he seemed like a person who was at home everywhere in the world, and everyone was his friend.

[48:49]

And he believed Palestinian people and Jewish people were really brothers and sisters. And I remember wondering about the word refugee. So it's interesting to me, just being with these kids for a whole day, and they tell you, Miss, a year ago I spoke no English. Here's my book. Unbelievable problem. You're so inspired. You think this is the political act to talk about these kids and their existence. And they're in the world and they're so brave and they're so beautiful. And, you know, so if you can't write about everything, you know, I would choose to write about things which lift us up in duty or give us more hope. The last two questions. How is access to information, which is, you know, sort of blown up over the years since you started writing when you were six, how has that changed your writing, either your access to information or your reader's access to information?

[49:52]

Well, you know, I think reader's access to information, I think, I mean, we're all in the same situation. We could look up the history of a place we don't know anything about, a city we've never heard of. We can look things up so much more easily. I have maintained very simple ways as a writer. You know, I don't really feel like the onset of technology really changed me that much as a writer. I mean, the fact that I can stay up all night and do Skype classes with kids in Muscat is beautiful to me. It's great. I'd like to be able to have that kind of access, but that's like, again, it's a human access. You know, encouraging kids to write poems over Skype and that they actually do it, and then they come up and stare you in the face and read the poem. That's amazing. But they like it, because to them it's fun. It's like reading, you know, to this friend far away. But I don't know, I still feel very simple in practice, so I don't know if I could answer that question well.

[50:58]

Certainly having access to more angles on the news. is a change. To be able to look up the same story from five different news sources and see how it's being presented, I think that's a big one. My father, as a newspaper journalist, always used to say, think about all the different sides of this story that aren't being quoted. Think about all the voices we're not hearing. Think about the people who are standing over there who had a completely different view of what happened. and they weren't quoted. And so that ability now to read the New York Times, read the Guardian, read this, read that, all these different places, I think that's a change. And that's a positive change, I would think. Thank you. Was there one more question here? Yes, hi. I was wondering about any of the points that you read where you were bringing yourself into someone else's life or describing their experience.

[52:01]

So I just was wondering, that seemed to be somewhat of a common thread. Is there, you know, sort of that kind of voice? Could you comment on that or? I guess that is the common thread. I don't mean to break myself into their experiences so much. But, you know, I do try to witness, you know, the experiences of people I admire. I'm curious about. But it's back to that me, the Dharma talk. Now we've made a full circle of the Dharma talk. Kicking out the me. And yet, you know, to be... I think among writing people there is always that little nagging voice. Who am I to say anything? Who am I to talk at all? Who am I to tell what I saw? Nothing. But I saw it. And I wrote that elevator in Belfast. I know what that Titanic crane looks like.

[53:03]

I've been to that haunting Titanic museum where you realize how many people were brokenhearted when that ship went down for so many reasons that you never even thought about. Like the people who made all the linen napkins for the Titanic are honored in that museum. I never even thought about that. You just look at so many things differently if you have gone places, you know, and look at things. But it's not about me. I mean, I'd like to be out entirely of the story. Thank you all for being such generous friends here. And Positive Heart really is one of the world's greatest dreams come true. And you're here. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[54:13]

Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, Visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[54:35]

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