Tag Archives: Japanese garden

Pretending to have a Japanese garden

Posted on February 18, 2012 by otinokyad

This photo and the following bulleted paragraph are from my About page, which deconstructs the title of this blog, in this case the middle word “garden”:

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Riders of the Last Spark

Posted on October 15, 2011 by otinokyad

[This was originally posted on September 16, 2011, but had to be completely and imperfectly re-written following the crash of a MySQL server at my Web hosting service.]

The allusion in the title of this post is pretty simple. But if you don’t recognize it, the rest of us will wait while you check this page at IMDB…. I agree: It’s an awful pun, but please allow me to explain in the context of the following stunning photograph:

summer_sunset_in_tofino

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Does a buddha have Molly nature?

Posted on April 8, 2011 by otinokyad


That’s our cat Molly. Although she has the up-raised visage of a Madonna or an about-to-be-martyred saint in some 14th century painting, there is nothing angelic or beatific or holy about her. Like all cats, her outlook and bearing accord with this familiar aphorism: Dogs have owners; cats have staff.

Even if she doesn’t seem “spiritual,” however, she is very “contemplative.” Witness the four images below, which show typical behavior. The middle/upper shows Molly beside my meditation cushions, looking out at the earliest incarnation of what eventually became our Japanese balcony garden. I don’t know what she was thinking. Perhaps it was a prayerful, “please let that squirrel show up again this morning.” Presumably it was not a koan-inspired mu, although I suppose it could have been a mew. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist, even if it surely wasn’t original.)

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The aesthetics of iMandalArt

Posted on February 6, 2011 by otinokyad

Last September, I wrote a post about productivity apps and the impending appearance of the iPad version of iMandalArt. In November, I added a brief update with a link to the MandalArt Website with videos — three of them now in English — that show the app in action. Here is the one that I have subsequently found most helpful:

Less than a week after my update, iMandalArt HD was released, and I have now been living with it for a bit more than two months. I say “living with,” rather than “using,” advisedly. As I wrote in the original post:

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