It's snowing like crazy today, here in the Rockies.

D

DC back to DM:

At 11:44 AM 4/1/2005 -0700, Dennis wrote:

My memories of Suzuki-roshi are slight--but nonetheless treasured. He was already ill when I first went to Page Street.
 
"Told" by my roommate who was probably fed up with my fecklessness that I "ought" to visit Zen Center, I went to several Suzuki-roshi lectures. One of them I think was his "you're seeing the world through pink spectacles" lecture. I was very taken with him and by the refinement of the Page Street environment. This must have been either Suzuki-roshi's final summer or the one before that. Dick Baker was in Japan--to a new student, a somewhat mythic "heir apparent" figure.
 
After some months in a Page Street apartment I moved into the building. Suzuki-roshi came to some meals, sitting at the "top" table, but the only time I spoke with him was at a Q&A session in the dining room. I no longer remember what it was I asked him about. He wasn't taking new students at that time and we newcomers had to make do with Katagiri, Silas, et al.
 
I remember filing through Suzuki-roshi's room the sesshin morning he died. I also remember the subsequent funeral. It's some measure of how profoundly he affected people that, although many of us were relatively new students who had had little personal contact with him, we were deeply grief-stricken.

DC: Wow. Your were faster than I had hoped for.

A question. Where were you born and what happened up to the time you came to ZC and what of it might have made you interested in Zen? - you seem to be adept at abbreviated telling.

d

DM:
Re: for your archive

Why? In brief: I was down and almost out, but was just beginning to scratch my way back.

I was born in England (1931). Had a career as a journalist (Fleet Street, London) and then went to Jamaica to help midwife Jamaican independence for the Colonial Office. Information officer--sort of junior diplomatic corps. But the bureaucracy got to me. I jumped ship (I was also at the end of a marriage: two young sons), became freelance BBC correspondent, etc. etc., and hightailed it to California, arriving in Haight-Ashbury the year before the hippie thing came into existence (1964). Lived the beatnik existence in Haight for several years, had a breakdown, was hospitalized, then halfway-housed (while in the halfway house,  met Steve Weinstein, doing his selective service stint as a counselor, I believe--though that isn't what took me to Zen Center). A year or two later I found my way to Zen Center. A good job I did.

The first time I heard of SFZC was some years earlier (probably 1968). In the Haight, I ran the Weedpatch (at Haight and Masonic--a sort of head shop, though didn't deal in drugs: international tobacco store; in those days, we pretty much all smoked cigarettes). One day Tony Patchel came in as a customer. Mentioned ZC. I was mildly curious, but it wasn't until later, around 1970, with all the New Agey stuff  going on-- Gaskin; TM; Yogi Bahjan; gurus galore--when I was shopping around and being turned off by most-all groups, that I went to ZC. I didn't know my ass from my elbow, or Buddhism from Hinduism. In fact, the entire "mysterious East" thing scared me. But I liked what I saw in Suzuki-roshi.

That, I think, must be more than enough. An inglorious past. But perhaps not as untypical of Zen students at that time--or some of them--as I sometimes think. I was of course a bit older than most new students.

As to the abbreviated telling, as you put it: well, I was (perhaps still am) a journalist. And for the past fifteen years I have copyedited books  (for university presses: Johns Hopkins UP; Columbia UP; U of Virginia P, etc.).

And I always liked the Inkspots.

DM in subsequent email mainly dealing with technical problems we were having:

This seems to be my week for reconnecting with Zen friends. An hour ago, Michael Sawyer phoned. It's been years. A month or more ago I left a message at Green Gulch seeking his number (I may have a commission for him: artwork.--if he's well enough to do it).

DC: I liked the Inkspots too and saw them (with maybe no original members) in the early seventies in Monterey with Charles and Caroline Page, Bill Wenner, can't remember who else. "If I Didn't Care" is one of the great classics in my book. They predate rhythm and blues wouldn't you say? But at the same time they helped to bring it all in.

You were born in some town in some place in England where the language, as I remember it as you presented it to me, is unintelligible. Couldn't write out that sentence about coal oil or something could you?

DM:

Dialect

From near Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as it was called (now designated West Yorkshire: UK central government split Yorkshire, way the biggest county, into three counties--I think it was Maggie Thatcher did it--to cut us down to size. A Texan might understand that).

I have little idea how to spell it, but . . .

We're dahn int' coyl oyl
wheer muck clarts ont'winders.
Thet's weer wi are--
weer noh wun can fynd us.

Yorkies--Tykes--are renowned for their bloodymindedness.

But Yorkshire dialect is BBC English compared with that in Westmorland (now redesignated Cumbria), where I went to boarding school. I was told that local shepherds when counting their sheep recited

Yant
Tant
Titheree
Mitheree
(five I forget, but I think single syllable)
Airters
Flairters
Overs (short o)
Dovers
Dik

A few years ago, when reading a history of the UK sheep industry (don't laugh: it turns out to be fascinating) I discovered that variations on this counting system, not too different from the above, have been found in other parts of Britain. My guess is it is Celtic associated.

Dennis

DC: It warms the cockles of my heart to hear you say that so to speak again. And thanks for the counting system. And for getting in touch.