Despite my urgent need to tap into somethingthat is necessary for my time, I am left with a visionof numbers. My pagan blood and sleeping momentson the beach. Why do I still want to be Jimmy Buffett? Idle and brutal from all eternity, like Rimbaud, sittingon a park bench with my two best friends.The wind blowing. The day glowing. […]
Different Abilities, Different Individuals: Shifting Perceptions About Disability
In most schools with a progressive curriculum and solid ethics, students living with disabilities are welcomed, their needs accommodated, and encouraged to participate as fully as they can in the life of the school. However, once they graduate, many feel thrown into a world where diverse institutions neither have nor care to have the kind […]
Even a Full Moon Needs Sunlight
Understand that even a solar burpis bigger than Planet Earth.And the corona shone. In 250 million yearsit will come around again, even though it is right here, all of the time. The vital Sun. Trapped in a beltor aurorae. Solar winds. Nothinglives without it.Even a full moon needs sunlight. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His […]
Falling Into the Well
While looking for the way, we fall into the only placewhere we can quench our thirst. The way is not out there. It is notaround the corner. The way is whatwe need and do not give into. The way is what we are and do notallow others to know. The way falls into us,like an open-eyed man falling into […]
Woodenfish and Shenzhen: Building Networks with Researchers in Buddhism and Science
On 22 August, I travelled with my wife from Hong Kong to Shenzhen in Mainland China to present a paper at a conference titled, Buddhism, Science, and Future: Brain Science and Mental Well-Being. The Woodenfish Foundation, an international Buddhist educational NGO, organized this conference at the Interlaken OCT Hotel Shenzhen from 23–24 August. Woodenfish was an […]
Janguli: Goddess Protector from Snakes and Poisons
Yellow Janguli. From Facebook Janguli is a Buddhist goddess who protects from snakes and poisons, worshiped in the ancient past by the shamanic tribes in Northern India. Her Sanskrit name means “subjugator of snakes.” In Tibet she is known as Dugselma – “remover of poison.” The goddess masters all poisons and uses them not to […]
My Core
My core does not speakin Classic Greek hexametersor return to the left margin.It is a scallop shell, a snakeshedding its skin, with an infinite supply of words and pages to turn over.Yet, my whole is recordedon a single, foreboding page.38 years of life. One exposed solitary page. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, […]
How Children See
Children see melodiescrackling, jumping, stretching,crowding, living like hummingbird bones taking offfrom a cage of suet.They see corn, millet, oats, and sunflowers,devouredinto the bloodstream, racingdown the arteries of a secret language, a communication flooding the transcendent, and the soft distance of headlights, as she waitsfor him to come back. Children see storm cloudsand distant planets,the tendons of other animals moving about,and the seconds growing rarer and more […]
We Are This Kind of Species
We grew this way; weare this kind of species. Sculling past the underpasses,just unpreventable fragments ofour former selves. We grew thisway; we are this kind of species. Unmarked. Lost from the hive.Barely living off the sun. Stealingfrom the sun. With unlaced shoes, uncombed hair, hand made signs,and machine egos once as big as Texas. We […]
A Force of Life That We Named
By switching off the gateway,we open up the hallways. Aquantum shift. Transpersonal,and full of pain. Opening upcommunication that I have neverhad before. Emergency controlover the transcendent. A wiseway to use the awareness of abiochemical religion. Flooding thebrain with traumatic happiness, Irise from the cracks of our razzlezone. A heart opening. A release ofsome other force of life that we named.