Our air-conditioning went out last Wednesday afternoon. This was irritating because we replaced the entire system, as we did everything else in this condo, only a few years ago. To the credit of the company that installed the new system, they had a technician here within the hour. Presumably he was already working somewhere on the island and came to us as soon as he finished that job. He quickly determined that a motor had burned out long before it should have, but these things happen. He also quickly learned that they do not have a replacement in stock and somewhat more slowly that they can not obtain one until Monday, that is tomorrow, at the earliest.
In midsummer this would have been seriously distressful. However, Helene kept us relatively cool Thursday and Friday with wind and rain, and we have overhead fans in both bedrooms and on the screened porch, plus Carol drove to Walmart and bought a powerful floor fan.
Our highs have only been 83-85F/28-29C and lows 71-73F/21-22C. Not intolerable and once the rain stopped, we have been living with all the doors and windows open which I am enjoying very much. The membrane between us and the outside world is negligible. I hear the wind in the live oaks and Spanish moss. Ripples on the shore of Skull Creek. Birds. I awaken at night to feel the usually slight breeze off the creek as well as that of the fan. I can smell the not unpleasant marsh. With everything open this condo is even more than usual like living on a boat.
However I confess that when the replacement motor arrives, we will close up again for a while.
I have more than a dozen books of Japanese and Chinese poetry. When I finish one, I scroll down in the Kindle app on my iPad Pro to the one I last read longest ago and start rereading it. I have now read all of them several times.
My copy of ZEN POETRY: LET THE SPRING BREEZE ENTER is 188 pages long. Of that, the first 62 are introduction and the last 12 are about the death of Shinkichi Takahashi who lived 1901-1978. That leaves 114 pages of poems. 31 of those pages are devoted to Takahashi.
I have written that with a few exceptions I much prefer the ancient Chinese and Japanese poets to the more modern. The ancients speak to me as the moderns do not. This is particularly true of Takahashi and devoting so much more of the book to him than any other poet is disproportionate, to say the least.
I offer you three examples of what I do not even consider poems. These are representative. I could have provided many more examples. In fact practically all of those of his included in the anthology.
An anonymous did not like my thought about Zen in a previous entry. Although I admire most of the poetry in the anthology, this will give him something more to complain about.
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