long time gone

Brother Martin turned 82 yesterday and told me I was a treat. I love treats. He has been a monk for 55 years and pitched his last game of softball the day before he went into the monastery. He said if he would have had a better job he probably wouldn't have. I like that about him. No agenda. No big entrance fee. No drama. Just a monk. I would make a shitty monk. I hate to think of myself as high maintenance, but if my black turtleneck sweater isn't clean, I'm fucked. What I look like is way too important. Way. Consuming. Brother Martin has no look good. He carries around his hearing apparatus in a worn cardboard box, the pick-up aimed toward the audience. And I have little regard for staged simplicity: for simple shoes that cost a bzillion dollars and simple not-quite-white cotton towels that cost 28 dollar apiece, for that just right hemp bag that creates the illusion of simplicity when in fact it is high democratic costuming. I remember when I made most of my own clothes out of muslin that was 38 cents a yard. Now, the simpler the fabric, the more it costs. I'm certain there are excellent reasons for this, that slave labor and transportation isn't cheap, but it is a sellers market, and in se portland, we are so fucking homogeneous in our uniquity.

That isn't a word.

Brother Martin speaks about god with a familiarity that comforts me.