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Happy Barista Day — Encounters

Posted on by stephen t berg / 8 Comments
Today, March 1st is Barista Day

In celebration of all the hard-working, underappreciated, wonderful baristas, that set the tone for our mornings — Happy Barista Day!

Encounters

I

“Good morning! What can I get started for you?”
“Americano, Grande, thank you.”
“Did you see the meteor shower last night?”
“No, totally missed it.”
“It was like the sky kicked over a bucket of stars.”
“Really, wow.”
“Yeah, it was like city lights, far off, then suddenly,
right at your eyes, a lightening of fireflies.”
“Amazing, sorry I missed it.”
“And don’t let them tell you there isn’t accompaniment,”
“What?”
“it was like listening to a drove of xylophones.”
“Crazy — triple shot please.”
“It was like I couldn’t inhabit the moment fully enough.”
“That’s big.”
“It was like seeing my ex-boyfriend flung out into the nebula,”
“Room for cream, please.”
“… while hearing news that his new girlfriend fell through a grate,”
“Debit — thanks.”
“and I’m like, oh, so this is why we have senses. Right?”
“I guess.”
“They say there’ll be another one tonight.”
“I’ll be sure check it out.”
“Oh, you must, it’s like a lesson in how to walk three feet off the ground.”
“That’s some lesson.”
“It’s like having all your beliefs melt into mysteries.”
“Interesting.”
“Isn’t it? You have an excellent day now!”

II

“Good morning dear.”
“Americano, Grande, please.”
Did you see the stars just before dawn?”
“No I didn’t.”
“Oh they were brilliant, you could have plucked them like strings.”
“Really, I’ll need to step outside earlier.”
“Oh yes do, you’ll hear the music of spheres.”
“Remarkable.”
“The original music that launched all language.
“Extra shot please.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ve not seen them like that before, brilliant, as to be prescient.
Do you understand?”
“Maybe? — debit, please.”
“Even now I see them. Almost wish them out of my head,
but for the radiance.”
“I’m sure the memory will let up.”
“I feel them watching under the cover of daylight.”
“What?”
“Like angels — receipt?”
“No thank you.”
“Right you are, no use being encumbered.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your drink will be waiting for you at the end of the bar —
don’t read the couplet beneath the cup until you’re finished the coffee.”
“I’m not sure…”
“You’ll be fine, remember, everything finite reveals the infinite.”
“…I follow.”
“Simply follow detachment, the sister of fearlessness,
the child of love, the way of peace, and you’re free, my dear.”

Peace/Resistance/Spirituality/War

Fearful Times Require Fierce Dancing

Posted on by stephen t berg / 18 Comments

Like the old man, Fedil Fejzic, who goes out under the cover of night
to avoid the snipers, to milk his cow,
and each day for 440 days, delivers its milk before dawn
to a young widow with a baby, not even a compatriot.

Or like Noi, tall as a garden fence, and Thorn, her partner,
slightly taller, same smiling disposition,
who each day deliver tins of food to the hovels of Bangkok,
call themselves, “slum sitters,”
call it their calling.

Or like Nelly Stharre who sang her heart,
was burned down in Dominica,
her only threat, singing Jah’s song of Peace and Love.

Or like Mildred Ryder who put on a pair of canvas sneakers,
donned a blue tunic on which she had sown her new name,
Peace Pilgrim,
walked across America five times — 25,000 miles in three decades —
through all the wars, until her death in 81.

Or like the soldier, Logan Laituri,
so struck by the Sermon on the Mount,
was rendered helpless
to pick up a rifle, so offered his body.

Or like Arno Michaels, former white supremacist,
who wrote, Life After Hate,
where he says, his change of heart was nothing so dramatic,
just common association with ordinary people.

People, like the lady in a calf-length woolen jacket,
orange toque pulled over hijab,
who cleans the Save-On parking lot early in the morning,
who I love to say hello to
because she smiles so easily,
and so well.

Like all of us, ordinary people, fearful, angry, 
and just as often, courageous, magnanimous,

who now see: the point at which we feel helpless
about the current crisis, is also the point of truth:
the fierce dance, to pray for justice, for peace,
to act faithfully towards others.

Like the old man who later fell on hard times,
his cow, slaughtered for meat before the end of the siege,
and when approached by a reporter who knew the widow,
his eyes brightened,
his first question, “And the baby, how is she?”

Art/Ecology/Spirituality

The Photographer

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L: acoustic ecology series, by Adela C. Licona (with a quote from Joy Harjo, imagine what it would be like to dance close together – in this land of water and knowledge)
R: Forest on a Pedestal, by Trileigh Tucker

When you consider that in the last hour more pictures have been taken than in the entire first century of photography, you’ll understand the difficulty modern photographers face in reaching us.

There are, of course, picture takers, and there are photographers. There are those of us who click at things, and there are those who catch frame-fulls of beauty, hidden radiance even, and then there are those who carefully, lovingly, fill up the rectangle with much of what is unseen.

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.  –Dorothea Lange

Japanese Relocation Camp, California, 1942 – Dorothea Lange

 

The Photographer’s Shooting Script: a sample

grieving falcon, as seen from a receding glacier
giant European windmill in love with a field of lavender
palm tress racing toward an ocean sunset
in the middle of a deciduous forest, a pagoda, with a bride
Marrakesh market with its sunrise ruptures of colour
Tokyo covered in evening ochre
attendees at a wake for the late river Thames
challenger to a Central Park doom sayer
girder on Eiffel Tower reveals rules of harmony
triptych of defiant tulips
tabloid reverting to pulp, then fir seedlings
standoff, choice of weapons, lipstick or party balloons
any scene, when shifting left, looks like Chernobyl
a degree right, and its children, skipping in a garden
cliffs weeping long after the storm has left
manifestos burning in a sink
committees coming under the influence of meaning
evidences of selflessness
an outbreak of mercy
a blessing, repeated, growing like fractals
the hidden part of the soul
a macro of the self you pray you’re becoming
a handprint, turning us ever toward our neighbours

 

Fear/Hope/Love

Deer in the Mist

Posted on by stephen t berg / 8 Comments

Our hearts follow fox trails of passion,
but passion is kindling, is appetite, not love.

It is no surprise that battles rage on,
surround us with their danger,
supply us their suffering,
what astonishes is the singing,
in the soulless hour,
preceding any promise of dawn,
as though Christ and the Holy Ghost
just furnished all spring’s flowers with vocal folds,
the singers, now, unstoppable.

Wisdom says fear is driven over the cliff,
drowned in the sea by love.

Says, our spirit persists, nourished by the promise
of winter’s end,
by the warm smell of deer on the cut lawn,
coming through the dark mist,
by lingering
at brunch, on a patio with a friend.

Everywhere hope is pushed down
an angel springs up.
Hope is malleable,
but insisting on angels drives the angels away.

Everything real, happens first,
out of sight, in the far away furnaces of courage
which are fueled, not by passion, but love.

Love is forever.
But out of love,
love gives in to its own dying.

These are Wisdom’s two equations,
and they are one.