This is my other favorite of the Dimentia 13 records. It was all recorded at home on 4-track cassette machines. It's a very intimate record.
Today I am reporting from the home of Mickey "X-Nelson" Hurray, drummer for Zero Defex, in Akron, Ohio where I am spending the night before making the final haul of my ass to Durham tomorrow. Right after I get to Durham, though, I am getting on a plane bound for Texas. I'll be speaking in Houston, running a retreat in Austin, then heading back to North Carolina for a retreat there, followed by yet another retreat in Brooklyn. After Brooklyn I'll be in Baltimore and then Richmond, Virginia. All of my tour dates are right here. Or as follows:
TEXAS
• March 14, 2010 (Sun) 9:45 am Houston Zen Center - 1605 Heights Blvd., Houston, TX 77008 (Dharma Talk, public welcome) For info contact info@houstonzen.org
• March 18 - 21, 2010 (Thurs - Sun) Austin Texas Dharma Punx Retreat (registration required). For info write to Bosco at bosco_freak@yahoo.com
NORTH CAROLINA
• March 25 - 28, 2010 (Thurs -Sun) 4 Day Zazen Retreat (registration required) Southern Dharma Retreat Center - 1661 West Rd., Hot Springs, North Carolina 28743 (near Asheville) Register at southerndharma@earthlink.com
NEW YORK
• April 2 - 4, 2010 (Fri - Sun) 3-Day Non-residential Zazen Retreat (registration required) Brooklyn Zen Center 398 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215, contact Jacopo Buora jacopo.buora@gmail.com or call (347)237-1702 for more info.
The info for Baltimore and Richmond will be posted as soon as I get it.
I called today's piece "spawning ground" because every time I come to Akron I feel a little like a salmon swimming upstream to mate and die. Only I never get to mate with anyone here and I have yet to die. It;s just that it feels like going back to the land that spawned whatever it is I have become. I still have some kind of deep connection to this place. It's in my blood or some such thing. The taste of Luigi's pizza is like mother's milk or whatever it is that salmon babies eat.
But let me tell you about the rest of the tour so far...I did that gig in Kansas City I mentioned last time. I was hosted there by Blake and Shari Wilson, who I also mentioned last time. Here's a photo of them so you know what kind of people to picture. It was a terrific gig. The biggest laugh I got that night was touched off by something that came up on the comments section of this very blog.
At one point in the talk I brought up that someone in the comments section here, while talking about the recent broo-haha concerning Jundo Cohen, said something along the lines of, "Why is there so much trouble within Dogen Sangha. Other Buddhist sanghas never have those kinds of arguments." At that point the entire auditorium burst into laughter. I didn't get it at first. But later on someone told me that there were currently some serious disagreements within one of the local Buddhist groups.
Folks, let me clue you in, all Buddhist sanghas -- and I do mean every single one of them everywhere in the world ever since Buddhism began -- has had (or is currently having) problems most of which make the stuff in Dogen Sangha look like tiddlywinks. And, just FYI, Mr. Cohen is not even part of Dogen Sangha and has not been associated with DS for years. In actual fact, lately the Dogen Sangha people have been getting along mightily well together. Knock on wood!
I'm not even gonna go into this subject here. I feel like I already wrote a whole gosh darned book about it! Oh, that's right. I did!
Next stop was Cedar Rapids where I was hosted by the very gracious and wonderful Zuiko Redding of the Cedar Rapids Zen Center. Zuiko is one of the greatest Zen teachers you could ever hope to meet. And she's just out there in Cedar Rapids doing what needs doing with very little fuss or fanfare. I first met her at Great Sky three years ago. You would do yourself well to seek out someone like her in your neck of the woods, or head on out to Cedar Rapids.
My two talks there were very nice. Funny story on that, a friend of mine from the area came out to Cedar Rapids to hang out and hear me talk. She's not a Zennie -- I do have a few friends who have zero interest in Buddhism -- but she was into getting a taste of it. Zuiko was kind enough to give her a spot in the Zen Center to crash, so she got a lot more Zen than she really bargained for.
After hearing loads of Zen talk and participating in a few of the ceremonies my friend said, "Oh! I get it! Zen people are nerds! It's just like learning to speak Klingon, and wearing Klingon clothes and practicing Klingon customs!"
She didn't mean this as an insult. She's quite a nerd herself (she is a friend of mine, after all). The nerdiness of Zen was something she could relate to.
It's so true, though! I've been using the phrase "Zen nerds" for a few years but it's nice to see someone from outside this particular little subculture say exactly the same thing. In some ways being way into Zen is frighteningly like being a Trekkie or a Star Wars nerd or any of those things. I first noticed this when I saw how much Zen nerds had in common with the Godzilla fanatics I had to deal with at work when I worked in the Japanese monster movie industry.
In any case, I had a grand old time in Iowa. Saw America's first ever mosque, which is in Cedar Rapids of all places. Got to hang out in Iowa City and Mount Vernon, eating cheese sandwiches and licorice flavored caramel.
Last night I hung out with my friend Alex Wald in Chicago. Alex is an amazing artist who I first met 11 years ago when I found his art on punk rock record covers and commissioned him to do some illustrations for Tsuburaya Productions. He was obviously a big Ultraman fan and used to sneak some references to Ultraman into his record covers. Alex is gonna be doing the artwork for the cover of my upcoming book from New World Library.
OK. It's almost midnight and I gotta get rested up to hit the road again tomorrow.
Good night from me & Sock Monkey!
