the rohn report

welcome to the rohn report . . . for thursday march 9, 2023 tone poem somehow i see christmas trees while listening to this brightly lit christmas trees / numerous and shinyglittery now it’s dark / a large pit with only one ladder / it’s broken then the wars of Rome on a newsreel / a battle scene clear water / like a gel or an expensive brand of toothpastenow it’s greenish it’s amazing what you ca...

I’ve got Aloe growing in profusion on my front porch. It seems to like it there. It has a spire. Babies abound among the sessile fronds. It’s a beautiful thing, it’s a healing, welcoming, generous plant. If only we could know the magic of plants: who they are, how they work, what they do - we would be rich indeed, that’s my thought as I ponder the profusion of aloes. Old don Juan was a plant guy....

I’m having this sort of epic mythic battle in my mind: my desire to be a hermit and latibulate vs. my aspiration to be a famous poet and go to book signings. Part of me wants to start up new projects like podcasting on location, live with interviews and interactions. But then I realize I would have to interact with people and be responsible. As it is now I can cruise down Broadway any time I want,...

Shirley Horn was singing ‘Here’s to Life’ when I clicked on KRTU the jazz station this morning. It was powerful. I stopped what I was doing (mindlessly browsing the internet basically) and began reminiscing about my own life; what it has been like and what it can be. You know, all those existential questions that we ask ourselves in the middle of the night or on the top of the mountain or when som...

This week’s rohn report is late. I couldn’t think of anything to write about. It’s not like there’s not enough going on all around me all the time - the cars, the city, the wars, the bombings, the biosphere, the blogosphere, people doing things, the news, the economy, money, the stock market, issues and reasons and logos and diseases. Way more than I can even comprehend. It makes me want to hide,...

this guy pulls up in his black and silver BMW / the headlights are narrowed suspicious looking cunning aggressive / he paid for that / the side view mirror folds in when he turns it off / safety precaution the trees form a border between heaven and earth against a hazy morning sky the broad street is paved with asphalt a river flooded with cars it’s a parade all different kinds of cars driven (no...

Music has become a big part of the rohn report. And it has made it so enjoyable to work on. Finding the music, among the bajillions of songs on Youtube, identifying the tracks that will work with the words of the essay and editing them together. Spoken word and music. Like it ever was. Most of you may not realize it, or even care (haha), but the podcast is edited on Final Cut Pro - a video and aud...

I spent the past week in quiet repose. Nothing compelling appeared on the screen of my mind, no writing projects, no ambitious need to say something, no urgency to accomplish anything. Mostly what I’ve been trying to do is inhabit my own body; own it and feel it. Notice my own existence and be in communion with it. Sleep alot. Wake up slowly. Eat simply. Meditate. I’ve been meditating. Kairos, I w...

it sure surrounds us most dayssky and treesof course there are buildings tooplaced there among the carsand the amazing moments that connect us what do children feel before they can speak? what do trees feel between their roots? we know they communicatethru the mushroom myceliumsignals are sent in the form of chemicals these things are placed among ussky and treescars and buildingsit’s wild as a ju...

Yes, that would be us then. The hero is portrayed in art, literature and mythology but that’s only because it’s our story. Joseph Campbell’s transcendent, triumphant book explores and elucidates this point. It’s so richly adorned with wisdom and profoundly illuminated ideas that it’s slow going. I re-read entire passages to get all of it or just to savor the deliciousness of it again. If you would...

According to family lore, William Bradford , the governor of the Plymouth Colony (later absorbed into the Massachusetts Bay Colony) and a passenger aboard the Mayflower (that landed at Cape Cod in 1620), was an ancestor of mine. He was instrumental in the success of the first English colony in New England and perhaps the most famous of all the Pilgrims that celebrated Thanksgiving with the Indians...

Ok, maybe it’s not a Christmas movie but it does have an elf in it (Sebastian) and a Santa Claus of sorts (Tyrell) and an angel (Pris). It also has a bad boy, Roy, who all he wants for Christmas is ‘more life f#ø*!r’. Ok bad word but he gets his point across. He’s having a conversation with Tyrell, his maker (Roy is a replicant - not ‘human’). “More human than human is our motto” Tyrell informs Ro...

I can’t stop watching kids. I’m at the Pearl and there are kids in strollers, kids in their parent’s arms, kids tugging on their parents from down below or walking hand in hand along the broad way. One child is lifted out of her stroller and set down on the ground, she seems stunned as if she were just born that very moment. Utterly fascinating. What are they seeing? What are they perceiving in th...

I learned how to run the mile back in high school. Four laps around the track. I remember the feeling. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes exhilarating. For training we used to run the ‘big block’: six miles out in the country, past the apple and peach orchards of southwestern Michigan and back into town. Sometimes we’d run the ‘little block’. That was out around Bettis Hill and back. Just depended on...

I learned how to run the mile back in high school. Four laps around the track. I remember the feeling. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes exhilarating. For training we used to run the ‘big block’: six miles out in the country, past the apple and peach orchards of southwestern Michigan and back into town. Sometimes we’d run the ‘little block’. That was out around Bettis Hill and back. Just depended on...

Two of my favorite things. This is Avram Fefer: Bedouin Dream. Wow. Avram Fefer on the big sax with bassist Eric Revis, Marc Ribot on guitar and Chad Taylor drums. From the album Juba Lee recorded in 2022. Dig it. Jazz. It’s been around since the end of the 19th century rising up out of the Blues and the Spirituals of the deep South, the African dance rhythms, the call and response traditions. Whe...

So it’s like all this geo-political strife in the world. Russia vs. Ukraine. Russia vs. Nato. Hey Nato is an alliance formed for collective security. Why doesn’t everybody just join Nato? Why is it somebody vs. somebody all the time? We’re all somebody. Just make the group bigger. Russia and Chiba and North Korea. We could call it All Nations Oh. AlNato. Anyways that’s my thought upon waking up th...

Annie Dillard is a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Among her triumphs are Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood and The Writing Life . I have all three in a compiled volume. “For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. If you were a Zulu warrior banging on your shield with your spear for a couple of hours along with a hu...

The singer is Odetta , AKA the voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She’s been singing folk songs and popular ballads since way back in the sixties and even before that. She was a mentor to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Janis Joplin and a favorite of Martin Luther King Jr. The song takes me back to the Sunday School days of my youth when we used to sing it sitting in a circle in our little chairs. It...

At 7:15 AM on November 1, 1952 the United States conducted the very first full blown test of a hydrogen bomb on the tiny island of Elugelab in the South Pacific atoll of Enewetak. Elugelab was vaporized leaving a crater 6,000 feet wide and 160 feet deep. The fireball that rose up after the detonation was 4 miles wide and the mushroom cloud (which was all that was left of Elugelab) rose 27 miles in...

I’m imagining that I just arrived here. I just dropped into this body, into this world. I have no personal history. Nothing came before. The only orientation is my breath, coming and going. An inhalation. Followed by an exhalation. It’s sweet. It’s comforting, which I’m mostly in need of. Comfort and annihilation. Some kind of restart because I know there is no do over. If I could just focus on ea...

It’s probably a little too early to worry about this but the sun is going to burn out one day and turn into a red giant and devour Earth and all the inner planets and that will be that. Toast. Dust to dust. All that humanity has been and all that humanity has accomplished will be lost and forgotten. Who won the 1936 World Series for example (the Yankees over the Giants 4 games to 2) and all the re...

I first discovered Bluey in a New York Times article entitled ‘ A Children’s Show About Everything, Especially Music ’. Hmmm, that’s interesting, I thought, sounds kinda like the rohn report so I decided to report on it. laughter The first thing I have to report about Bluey is the great interaction between the kids and the parents. It’s amazing. Maybe not too realistic but refreshing. They’re alwa...

* Imagine what it’s like to not be alive. Pretty hard, right, since you wouldn’t have a brain. But imagine not not being alive, I mean that’s when you have a brain and a body and you live on a planet with other people and millions of species all connected in a biosphere. * Now imagine you were not alive but you had a brain and you were trying to imagine what it’s like to be alive. It would be unim...

I’m sitting at the Royal Blue Grocery in downtown San Antonio trying to write something. I don’t believe in writer’s block, that usually means I’m just not ready to write yet, but I need to write something for the newsletter. That’s why I’m scribbling in my notebook, trying to generate some momentum, see if I can come up with something. Nope, nothing yet. Maybe If I could just can’t see it. There’...