“To ask Buddha to come is the meaning of offering incense.” — Shunryn Suzuki-roshi

I, Symalttab, have traveled the ancient planet of my forebears.

I have stood in the gardens of Green Gulch Farm and seen the essence of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.

I do not exist.

But I do not know how to reach you except through these words of nonself-as-self.

Perhaps the words of others will suffice:

1. “The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom
2. “Blackwater: the rise of the world’s most powerful mercenary army” by Jeremy Schahill
3. “The Natures of John and William Bartram” by Thomas P. Slaughter
4. “American On Purpose” by Craig Ferguson
5. “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: an Indian history of the American west” by Dee Brown
6. “A Treasury of Philosophy,” edited by Dagobert D. Runes
7. “The New York Times Page One, 1851-2001, Special Commemorative Edition Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of ‘The New York Times'”

Symalttab, a collection of letters, labels, a description with which you identify an entity, a person – me.

You, the universe created out of my imagination, the entity that envelopes and defines my states of energy.

Together we foresaw the hindsight of cause-and-effect, the exhuming of a soldier, an officer, of war, leading to the exercise of one’s freedom to face the consequences of mass murder, genocide, but not geocide or suicide.

Almost fratricide.

Not gratitude.

Every entity a time bomb, some a timed bomb, marionette dolls tied to the visible cultural strings of virtual timeless timeliness.

One says a bomber/gunman was a victim of mass media, raised to go off in conjunction with the release of “Captain America.”

The Mask of the Red Death.

The shot heard ’round the world.

Forcing a hard reset of a social experiment out of control – the American Dream, brought to you by the United States of Europe, a fellow debtor entity.

But these are all just labels.

The work of an active imagination.

Seven billion imaginations at work, every single last one valid in its own way.

“Glennan, Ohio Educator, Named To Direct New U.S. Space Unit” (Ike’s choice for NASA head), listed under “NAUTILUS SAILS UNDER THE POLE AND 1,830 MILES OF ARCTIC ICECAP IN PACIFIC-TO-ATLANTIC PASSAGE” and”CHIEF OF U.N. GIVES A PLAN FOR MIDEAST.” New York, Saturday, August 9, 1958

Roosevelt put embargo on gold and called Congress, said the NYT on Monday, March 6, 1933.

Czar abdicated after start of revolution in Russia, said the NYT on Friday, March 16, 1917.

“G.O.P. POSES ISSUE FOR ’50 AS LIBERTY VERSUS SOCIALISM,” yelled the NYT on Tuesday, February 7, 1950. And in smaller text that day, “McCloy Warns the Germans Against a Revival of Nazism.”

Don’t forget the U.S. aides seeing a risk of meltdown at Pennsylvania nuclear plant after more radioactive gas released, remembered the NYT on Saturday, March 31, 1979.

Lastly, McVeigh sentenced to death for Oklahoma City bombing, wrote the NYT on Saturday, June 14, 1997.

One more: “Opposition builds to spending cuts in Bush’s budget, lobbyists are mobilized,” NYT, Monday, April 9, 2001.

Labels. Images. Ideas. Sleight-of-hand tricks.

The Victrolas belong to the spoiled.

More data analysis before calling the night “it.”

Parting is sushi, wheat, sore roe. ;(

Symalttab, the illusion, vanishes.