Monday Morning Motel Koans

8 a.m. Room 127 -- Motel 6, Needles, California  ------ June 2, 2o14 ---- photo by Mark Weber ---- The Colorado River establishes the border between California and Arizona ---  Needles is the border town, Rt. 40 ---- Note the yoga mat on the floor ---  I'm traveling back to Albuquerque from Los Angeles, it takes me two days sometimes more . . . .

8 a.m. Room 127 — Motel 6, Needles, California —— June 2, 2o14 —- photo by Mark Weber —- The Colorado River establishes the border between California and Arizona — Needles is the border town, Rt. 40 —- Note the yoga mat on the floor — I’m traveling back to Albuquerque from Los Angeles, it takes me two days sometimes more . . . .

MONDAY MORNING MOTEL KOANS

Instead of yoga:
trim moustache

Instead of: Hurry up and get on road:
Don’t hurry up and get on road

Now doing yoga
after
short meditation on possible benefits of
procrastination

Are these koans or haiku?
Ask neti pot

The sad problems of yesterday
receding into the past:
the road beckons, awaits

2june14

11 Comments

  1. Paula MAYHEW

    How about “Notes to Self, Inscribed”?

  2. Joshua Breakstone

    Having just returned from Japan where I visieted many sites associated with the poet Basho, I’d have to say……..yeah Mark!

  3. Mark Weber

    Paula, I’m not familiar with the reference, it sounds literary? I love the idea of “inscribed.” Probably very ancient. (I live in the past, alas.)

    I found these in my journal and had a chuckle —- They were written after a week or two of being badger’d by the clock, keeping appointments, destinations, schedules, shoved along by this world, grabbing a quick bite then pedal to the metal, and so forth.

    For me the most rewarding travel is meandering, just nosing around, poking down back roads, stopping in little towns and taking a walk, stopping to count the clouds, watch the ants on the anthill ——- I have a little mountain out on Kelbaker Road (Rt.40 mile marker 78) in the Mojave —- I hike across an arroyo and up the rocky mountain and sit for awhile facing south with a view of Joshua Tree National Monument 70 miles distant, then back in the arroyo I spread my mat under an acacia and arrange my muscles & bones to look like the acacia.

    The sadness was the dissolution/dismantling of my family home in Upland California — my father got away from us in December 2o12 and my mother recently had to be removed to an alzheimer’s home —– I was traveling with several boxes of family photos & correspondence going back some years, I grew up with all my grandparents, aunts, uncles, Greatgrandmom, everybody close by, and now the only left are my two brothers, Mom, and me ——- we’re a branch of the family tree of Ulster Scots (Weatherbee, Seaman, Todd, Weber) that is coming to a close (none of my brothers or myself had offspring) ———-Now, you know more about my bloodline that you needed . . . .

  4. Anna Diorio

    Mark,

    your musings find me here in the Barcelona airport – another travelers’ crossroads, yet this one buzzing with privilege, where everyone’s competing in the World Cup of shopping. and i just spent too much money on chocolate.

    anyway, i am grateful for this long layover, and for your poem(s)…

    -Anna

    P.S. when i signed into the airport internet, it presented me with this Proust quote:
    “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

  5. baatzu

    Excellent poem, Mark.

    I think the actual quote from Proust is: “The voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new bedroom walls, but in having new pajamas.

  6. Marty Krystall

    My father, Darwin Krystall, age 23 in 1941, a 2nd lieutenant in the US Army, training with the 7th Division artillery, Battery B, in the Mojave desert, on leave, walks into a cafe in Needles. There is no thermometer in the place, but yesterday the paint blistered on the tanks, and some GIs fried eggs on the sidewalks. A customer comments, “Sure is hot today.” The waitress replies, “A lot cooler than yesterday.” Darwin asks the waitress “How hot was it yesterday?” She responds, “We don’t talk about that.”
    The irony of this story is that the 7th Division left directly from 29 Palms in 112 degree heat to fight the first U.S. confrontation with the Japanese army on Attu, spring of 1942 in the Aleutian Islands off of Alaska in the frozen tundra.

  7. dino j.a. deane

    mark

    love the picture and the poem

    procrastination is an art
    often misunderstood by the novice
    procrastination does not mean you don’t do what needs to be done
    procrastination means you wait until the last possible moment to do what needs to be done, make the deadline and impress everyone with the work – that is the art of procrastination
    d

  8. Nels Cline

    Love this.

    XO

  9. Carol Sawyer

    Lovely to read these poems while procrastinating on deciding which of many possible tasks on my list to tackle after a big lunch. Made logey by the return to solid food after 2 days of liquid fasting, and fruitless morning spent trying to sell stuff at a waterlogged flea market. Sometimes it’s more productive to put things off… Sometimes it’s more nourishing not to eat, than to eat….

  10. Eric Breitbart

    Nice poem Mark. Of course, you know the difference between pro crastination and amateur crastination. I know a pro when I see one, if I can get up off my ass to look

  11. Bob Gusch

    I was born a procrastinator but I’ll tell about that later.

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