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Inside Boy’s Mind | One Continuous Mistake

https://continuousmistake.com/2014/07/18/inside-boys-mind

An Architecture of Empathy →. Inside Boy’s Mind. A couple weeks ago, as I was putting him to bed, I told Boy for the first time about my travel plans this weekend to Los Angeles. Boy has never been to L.A. He drinks this in and says, “Papa? I have a secret.”. I ask, leaning in. “Los Angeles ”. 8220; is inside my brain.” He taps his head with his finger to make the point. I try to clarify:. Wait a minute. So when I go to L.A., I’m actually going inside your brain? How will I get there? You can do that?

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Clouds in the Shape of Dragons | One Continuous Mistake

https://continuousmistake.com/2015/02/06/clouds-in-the-shape-of-dragons

The Persistence of Landscape. Motherlode Burning →. Clouds in the Shape of Dragons. Posted by tracy franz. Today I am washing dishes as Nova Scotia fog drifts behind the glass of the window above the sink. My five-year-old son, with trembling lip and downcast eyes, tells me that he’s the one not Girl who put pennies into the computer. I wanted to tell you the truth, Mama. He shouts. We fly and shoot fire! Lying on our backs in the grass in this way, we are invisible to all but the clouds that move across...

continuousmistake.com

Motherlode Burning | One Continuous Mistake

https://continuousmistake.com/2015/04/23/motherlode-burning

Clouds in the Shape of Dragons. The River →. Posted by tracy franz. One of my childhood homes, the Motherlode Lodge, burned down a few days ago. It was an old landmark in Alaska. Many, no doubt, have fond memories of visiting the building on the way to ski or hike or pick blueberries in the mountains of Hatcher Pass. Incidentally, some years later in high school, Robbie would ask me, Hey, aren’t you Irish? One of my stepfather’s drinking buddies took a liking to that view as well, though, and I was reloc...

continuousmistake.com

New Snow | One Continuous Mistake

https://continuousmistake.com/2013/12/25/new-snow

Reverse Culture Shock. . . with Kids →. Posted by tracy franz. Ya’ll, UMbrella, YOUston. My mother, outside the photo, holds the camera. My father, in Texas, begins to build a new life. It is good here. I am grateful. But I miss Peru. The light from the streetlamps refracts against frozen air a procession of ghosts guiding us to a foreign land. Will bloom like fire, surrounding the temple. Within a year, we will take a taxi and then a. And then an airplane to North America. 2013 Nova Scotia, Canada. ...

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An Architecture of Empathy | One Continuous Mistake

https://continuousmistake.com/2014/09/30/an-architecture-of-empathy

Inside Boy’s Mind. Of Trees and Memory →. An Architecture of Empathy. Posted by tracy franz. Often, there are landmarks of recognition a character, a dwelling, a room, an object from my past. Sometimes it is entirely unexplored territory. Either way, I spend my nights mapping an interior landscape that reveals and reveals and reveals. Mama, where’s the piggy? The pigs, we’d been told, were to be found in a hay-filled corner of the barn before us. Do you want to get closer? A girl is a house. 2 thoughts o...

continuousmistake.com

Comfort Food | One Continuous Mistake

https://continuousmistake.com/2014/03/07/comfort-food

A Story About Language. A Small Matter of Consequence →. Posted by tracy franz. When I told a friend, a fellow American, that our family was moving to Canada from Japan, she exclaimed immediately, “Oh they have a kind of cookie there that I like very much! Sipped from a glass in a restaurant when I was barely 12 years old. In Mexico, cheese curds soft and fresh and salty. In Thailand, a coconut curry. Good, yes, but not quite what I had in mind. And watched as our children ate their weight in. Near the e...

continuousmistake.com

Bedtime Koans | One Continuous Mistake

https://continuousmistake.com/2014/01/30/bedtime-koans

A Story About Language →. Posted by tracy franz. Nearly every night after a book and then a chat about the day past or the dreams to come, I turn off the light and Boy offers questions that feel like koans they are that difficult. Why do people have bones? Or What is the world? Or Where do robots come from? Tonight it is How do birds stand in trees? No, replies Boy, How do birds stand in trees? I realize that he’s using my own over-enunciated. I say, A tree bows before the wind. Lovely article yet again,...

continuousmistake.com

A Small Matter of Consequence | One Continuous Mistake

https://continuousmistake.com/2014/04/01/a-small-matter-of-consequence

Night Sickness →. A Small Matter of Consequence. Posted by tracy franz. He looks so familiar. Look that snowplow is so big and strong! I’m late, I’ll say something when we come back this way. Just something so that he will know that I know. The words will come to me as I walk. As I am about to leave his room, Boy asks, “In spring, when the snow is all gone, can I ride my bike? 8221; Then the woman with long black hair leaping after me and screaming, “. Is writing this, now, enough? 8220;Mama, Mama look!

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Uncategorized | One Continuous Mistake

https://continuousmistake.com/category/uncategorized

Mother’s Day Flowers. Posted by tracy franz. It is May 8, 2010*, the day before Mother’s Day, and I am in Takamori, Japan, with my one-year-old son’s hand in mine, carefully ascending the stone steps to the gate of my husband’s teacher’s temple. We are here to celebrate. Or the Festival of Flowers otherwise known as the Buddha’s Birthday. Today, as I reflect on the first year of caring for my own child, I can’t help but recall the fantastical story of the Buddha’s birth, and of his mother:. As a new moth...

nyoho.com

Clear Voice « Nyohō Zen

https://nyoho.com/2013/12/20/clear-voice

The look, feel, and stuff of the Dharma. Principles of Zazen (Shōbōgenzō Zazengi). Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen (Fukanzazengi). It’s said that when the Buddha preached the Dharma, he did it in a voice that was somewhere between speech and song; the Japanese expression of this teaching is called. 聲明 or 声明, “clear voice”) . This half-singing eased the burden on the listener; it made the Buddha’s words easier to absorb. How to express Dharma? When people chant, what is the feeling? An unaf...