On marriage
fiction
edward w pritchard
by Mr. Liu ancient philosopher
Some people say that marriage is difficult but there is disagreement as to why. Marriage is difficult because when you are with someone for a length of time you do not keep your mind pure. Because of the intensity of the relationship between a husband and wife impurities develop.
The Zen Buddhist use the word Shoshin which means beginners mind. Approach marriage with an active empty mind. If your mind is empty of preconceptions it is ready for anything and open to everything. In the beginners mind their are many possibilities, in the experts mind there are few.
Emptiness is not to get bogged down with results and expectations. All results whether good or evil or neutral must be completely accepted.
Approach the subject of marriage humbly for you never know what fate has in store for you. You will begin with many opinions on the subject of marriage, later you will sit quietly and listen to expectations dissolve.
There is no secret to marriage, always be a beginner. Better to not think to much on the subject at all. There is no proper training and success is difficult to quantify.
humbly Mr. Liu
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Imaginary College Days
Imaginary College Days
fiction
edward w pritchard
The streets are full of students who live on campus marching happily through the imaginary colleges down toward the University center.
A girl is singing "Tomorrow belongs to me" very loud and very clear in the Germanic style. Everyone follows the girl, leaving me behind.
What is her secret message?
fiction
edward w pritchard
The streets are full of students who live on campus marching happily through the imaginary colleges down toward the University center.
A girl is singing "Tomorrow belongs to me" very loud and very clear in the Germanic style. Everyone follows the girl, leaving me behind.
What is her secret message?
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Hostile World, God are you listening?
Hostile World, God are you listening
fiction
edward w pritchard
Moods change unexpectedly,
summoned by fatigue, challenge and caffeine.
Follow your routine,
you conquered this before.
Just get through today.
Just give us our daily bread.
Live in day tight compartments.
Tomorrow never comes.
Lord one more thing,
I am worried about something new.
I know you are always listening
but is it the same time where you are as where I am?
I mean,
Is Time simultaneous here and there?
ed
fiction
edward w pritchard
Moods change unexpectedly,
summoned by fatigue, challenge and caffeine.
Follow your routine,
you conquered this before.
Just get through today.
Just give us our daily bread.
Live in day tight compartments.
Tomorrow never comes.
Lord one more thing,
I am worried about something new.
I know you are always listening
but is it the same time where you are as where I am?
I mean,
Is Time simultaneous here and there?
ed
To Seymour with love from brother Buddy
To Seymour with love from brother Buddy
fiction
edward w pritchard
for JD
Sometimes I'll see a Chinese woman, one of over billion faces of that race, and somehow her face will look like my American cousin or my first boss at the Restaurant where I washed dishes when I was fifteen years old. The face of the woman in question is definitely 100 % Chinese, with jet black hair and peculiar Chinese eyes but the expression and the nuances of the face are familiar as if there are only so many faces to go around and as if God has a limited supply of apparitions to grace the faces of the world with.
As I sat silently sobbing at my son JD's funeral, JD displayed in full military tribute after being killed and being recently shipped home from our Country's Middle Eastern War in honorable military tradition; as I sat sobbing it dawned on me as I looked at JD's face laying there in the heavy military casket that somewhere in the world someone with JD's face was going about his or her daily business unawares that a 24 year old American soldier who looked at little like them but from a different race and creed, was laying dead in his coffin while his Mother sobbed, too overcome with grief and despair to cry anymore.
Would that other face far away, maybe in China wash his hands over and over after carrying a dead kitten on a leaf rake for burial in our mulch pile, or would that other face fuss and fumble with his trouser cuffs when he met someone new in a formal setting? Would that other person still alive far away in China hug his Mother only with his left arm because his right shoulder was bad from a bicycle wreck as a six year old boy?
As I thought JD's bad shoulder laying there in his casket, I began to smile very inappropriately for a grieving Mother at a formal military funeral, and at that instant as the Minister continued his eulogy and glanced at me the sobbing Mother, I had a most inappropriate apparition on my face.
end
fiction
edward w pritchard
for JD
Sometimes I'll see a Chinese woman, one of over billion faces of that race, and somehow her face will look like my American cousin or my first boss at the Restaurant where I washed dishes when I was fifteen years old. The face of the woman in question is definitely 100 % Chinese, with jet black hair and peculiar Chinese eyes but the expression and the nuances of the face are familiar as if there are only so many faces to go around and as if God has a limited supply of apparitions to grace the faces of the world with.
As I sat silently sobbing at my son JD's funeral, JD displayed in full military tribute after being killed and being recently shipped home from our Country's Middle Eastern War in honorable military tradition; as I sat sobbing it dawned on me as I looked at JD's face laying there in the heavy military casket that somewhere in the world someone with JD's face was going about his or her daily business unawares that a 24 year old American soldier who looked at little like them but from a different race and creed, was laying dead in his coffin while his Mother sobbed, too overcome with grief and despair to cry anymore.
Would that other face far away, maybe in China wash his hands over and over after carrying a dead kitten on a leaf rake for burial in our mulch pile, or would that other face fuss and fumble with his trouser cuffs when he met someone new in a formal setting? Would that other person still alive far away in China hug his Mother only with his left arm because his right shoulder was bad from a bicycle wreck as a six year old boy?
As I thought JD's bad shoulder laying there in his casket, I began to smile very inappropriately for a grieving Mother at a formal military funeral, and at that instant as the Minister continued his eulogy and glanced at me the sobbing Mother, I had a most inappropriate apparition on my face.
end
Monday, January 7, 2013
Regrets of a Country Western singer, once removed
Regrets of a Country Western singer, once removed
fiction
edward w pritchard
I was never one to call a woman by a nick-name or a love name but today I am trying all the pet names to keep my old Ford truck running. I have seriously neglected the old girl, bald tires on three of four rims, with the good tire in the front of a rear wheel drive ten year old Ford Ranger with the passenger style light chassis. No weight in the bed either, no eighty pound bags of rock salt from Wal Mart, and no sand from Tractor Supply. I could fill the bed with snow but as you'll see I can't risk straining the battery with a restart.
I am somewhere in the badlands of New Mexico, only about forty miles from El Paso, Texas, but a freak snow storm is slamming me and my truck. Thirty five mile an hour winds are driving a hard snow horizontally, up from the Old Country road I am traveling on. It's a white out blizzard, like in a cartoon, although I suppose my life is more like a cartoon than regular reality. No wipers either, well they do work but I keep turning them off because they work only at one terrific clacking speed; its already frantic and loud enough in the cold cab of Daisy Mae, that's the love name I am calling my Ford truck to keep her from stalling or sliding off the path in this frantic storm. My truck is a good ole girl, not even complaining about the lack of heat, my fault too, I never got around to fixing the blown fuse last summer.
The real problem is first gear is out and the clutch slips badly. Me and Daisy have to go slow on these treacherous country roads because of the bad tires and the ice. I have been in second gear for over half an hour and the engine is straining to stall. I am barely moving forward on this old Country road and if Daisy stalls I am not sure if the battery is up to a restart. The starter sticks and sometimes just whines and won't turn over the engine without a push start. Because of the noise from the road and engine I have to rather intimately keep my left hand on the exposed metal door frame of Daisy to detect unusual thuds or shimmy's from the engine that might pre-sage real problems. That's why I address my Ford with a feminine nick name.
Still I risk having on the radio, all Country El Paso my favorite station. Country music is never noise to me, more like a whisper from God and today it's Loretta Lynn " I was raised on Country Sunshine". Wow I wish I could meet a lady like Loretta. A girl who gets up early to feed the horses and then happily stands with them at the fence and watches the Sun come up before she starts her day. Well at my age no more pretty women like Loretta I guess and besides I haven't met a woman in a long time who would take the time to care for much of anything, least of all animals.
Now, I love New Mexico. White Sands desert, Cloud Croft Mountain and of course Taos is one of my favorite places on earth; Taos with the fabulous light for artists, it's up there with Paris France or Madrid Spain. But here today, in the badlands nothing is familiar. I am on the wrong path, with a stalling Ford Ranger and if I stall out here I could definitely freeze to death before someone else comes along.
Hank Williams "Your Cheatin Heart" on radio El Paso now and I sing along which cheers me up. I was once a Country blues singer myself you know, not in Hank's class but I was famous once down this way and rich too, for a while at least. That was before all the throat problems.
Man I wish I could write words and music like Hank. " I saw the light, I saw the light". Hank was a genius!
Hank just help me and Daisy find an Old Country road over to El Paso Texas. And Daisy if you get us through this storm I promise, first thing to go straight to the Wal Mart garage and get you three first rate used Goodyear all season tires, a rebuilt starter and if there is enough room on my credit card I'll get the heater and wiper motor fixed too. Come on Daisy, its getting dark out and I doubt the battery can supply the power to run the headlights for too long.
Maybe I am a little crazy to talk to my truck and maybe it's odd for me to ask Hank Williams for help when I am in a jam, him dead and all, Hank gone all these years, but I do have an ace up my sleeve. I am wearing my Father's Hat. It's a very fine leather, brown cowboy hat, over a hundred years old; and My Father's hat always brings me luck and always helps me get out of whatever mess I have gotten myself into. For more on my Father's Hat see part two of this story next on this blog by that writer, Ed Pritchard.
But for now come on Daisy and Hank I need your help to get back on the path to El Paso.
Searching for lost Time
a cowboy's lament
Sorrow flows,
plunging downhill
making a silent roar
voiding the songs of the world.
Sorrows pool into a stagnant stinking green pond
disappearing in the late afternoon of life.
Far off, West
the Sun disappears.
Drink beer and listen to Country blues music
and count our regrets and lament lost time.
Morning soon, feel the Sun heralding another day.
end part one
fiction
edward w pritchard
I was never one to call a woman by a nick-name or a love name but today I am trying all the pet names to keep my old Ford truck running. I have seriously neglected the old girl, bald tires on three of four rims, with the good tire in the front of a rear wheel drive ten year old Ford Ranger with the passenger style light chassis. No weight in the bed either, no eighty pound bags of rock salt from Wal Mart, and no sand from Tractor Supply. I could fill the bed with snow but as you'll see I can't risk straining the battery with a restart.
I am somewhere in the badlands of New Mexico, only about forty miles from El Paso, Texas, but a freak snow storm is slamming me and my truck. Thirty five mile an hour winds are driving a hard snow horizontally, up from the Old Country road I am traveling on. It's a white out blizzard, like in a cartoon, although I suppose my life is more like a cartoon than regular reality. No wipers either, well they do work but I keep turning them off because they work only at one terrific clacking speed; its already frantic and loud enough in the cold cab of Daisy Mae, that's the love name I am calling my Ford truck to keep her from stalling or sliding off the path in this frantic storm. My truck is a good ole girl, not even complaining about the lack of heat, my fault too, I never got around to fixing the blown fuse last summer.
The real problem is first gear is out and the clutch slips badly. Me and Daisy have to go slow on these treacherous country roads because of the bad tires and the ice. I have been in second gear for over half an hour and the engine is straining to stall. I am barely moving forward on this old Country road and if Daisy stalls I am not sure if the battery is up to a restart. The starter sticks and sometimes just whines and won't turn over the engine without a push start. Because of the noise from the road and engine I have to rather intimately keep my left hand on the exposed metal door frame of Daisy to detect unusual thuds or shimmy's from the engine that might pre-sage real problems. That's why I address my Ford with a feminine nick name.
Still I risk having on the radio, all Country El Paso my favorite station. Country music is never noise to me, more like a whisper from God and today it's Loretta Lynn " I was raised on Country Sunshine". Wow I wish I could meet a lady like Loretta. A girl who gets up early to feed the horses and then happily stands with them at the fence and watches the Sun come up before she starts her day. Well at my age no more pretty women like Loretta I guess and besides I haven't met a woman in a long time who would take the time to care for much of anything, least of all animals.
Now, I love New Mexico. White Sands desert, Cloud Croft Mountain and of course Taos is one of my favorite places on earth; Taos with the fabulous light for artists, it's up there with Paris France or Madrid Spain. But here today, in the badlands nothing is familiar. I am on the wrong path, with a stalling Ford Ranger and if I stall out here I could definitely freeze to death before someone else comes along.
Hank Williams "Your Cheatin Heart" on radio El Paso now and I sing along which cheers me up. I was once a Country blues singer myself you know, not in Hank's class but I was famous once down this way and rich too, for a while at least. That was before all the throat problems.
Man I wish I could write words and music like Hank. " I saw the light, I saw the light". Hank was a genius!
Hank just help me and Daisy find an Old Country road over to El Paso Texas. And Daisy if you get us through this storm I promise, first thing to go straight to the Wal Mart garage and get you three first rate used Goodyear all season tires, a rebuilt starter and if there is enough room on my credit card I'll get the heater and wiper motor fixed too. Come on Daisy, its getting dark out and I doubt the battery can supply the power to run the headlights for too long.
Maybe I am a little crazy to talk to my truck and maybe it's odd for me to ask Hank Williams for help when I am in a jam, him dead and all, Hank gone all these years, but I do have an ace up my sleeve. I am wearing my Father's Hat. It's a very fine leather, brown cowboy hat, over a hundred years old; and My Father's hat always brings me luck and always helps me get out of whatever mess I have gotten myself into. For more on my Father's Hat see part two of this story next on this blog by that writer, Ed Pritchard.
But for now come on Daisy and Hank I need your help to get back on the path to El Paso.
Searching for lost Time
a cowboy's lament
Sorrow flows,
plunging downhill
making a silent roar
voiding the songs of the world.
Sorrows pool into a stagnant stinking green pond
disappearing in the late afternoon of life.
Far off, West
the Sun disappears.
Drink beer and listen to Country blues music
and count our regrets and lament lost time.
Morning soon, feel the Sun heralding another day.
end part one
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