Bram Stoker’s gothic novel Dracula was published on this day in 1897. While vampires had long been part of the cultural matrix. and there were even novels in the nineteenth century before Stoker, it is Stoker who brought it into the culture’s livingroom, or possibly more accurately into the bedroom.

The unsigned Wikipedia article on vampires notes how Stoker’s “vampirism as a disease of contagious demonic possession, with its undertones of sex, blood and death, struck a chord in Victorian Europe… (merging) with and dominated folkloric tradition, eventually evolving into the modern fictional vampire.”

And variations on the theme are continuous.

Last week Jan & I took auntie to see Dark Shadows, the latest in the many, many, many films, books, etc to deal with the ever popular blood suckers. (Rotten Tomatoes gives it a fifty-four percent positive rating. Jan gave it three out of five stars. And that’s pretty much where I stand, as well.)

There can be no doubt the undead are alive and kicking.

Why, precisely, I’m not so sure.

Social historians, sexologists and various others all have opinions on why…

Today vampires range from the camp versions like Johnny Depp’s Barnabas Collins to teen hearthrobs like the Twilight series star-crossed hero Edward Cullen, to Blood Ties’ cartoonist/detective Henry Fitzroy. Bad vampires and good, vampires for every taste…

Auntie has a taste for good vampires, who mostly eat out at blood banks, and apparently there is pretty close to an endless supply of this sub-set of the genre. Others, apparently, based on what you can purchase, like it nasty…

Me, I haven’t a clue as to why it never quite goes away.

But it certainly is interesting…

On this day in 1878 Gilbert & Sullivan’s H. M. S. Pinafore opened at the Opera Comique in London.

It has continued on its voyages ever since.

For those unfamiliar, if such exist, here’s the five minute version…

I just received a PDF of my contribution for the upcoming (July) issue of Shambhala Sun.

I really liked it. It includes really nice illustrations by Mike Holmes. He gives pictures for my three basic rules for meditation practice: sit down, shut up & pay attention.

That last one “pay attention,” is, I find, the hardest for people to actually tumble to.

Some while ago I opined on a story going around the web purporting to be a Zen anecdote, involving rain, an umbrella, a senior Zen student and his teacher. It appeared to suggest that Zen was about developing one’s memory.

As good as improving memory is, Zen is not in fact about developing memory skills.

And, now, in my article, the illustration for paying attention is having the meditator sitting down, good, and with arrows all around pointing out.

Not quite it.

In fact the great Eihei Dogen had something to say about this very thing in his essay the Genjokoan, sometimes translated as actualizing the fundamental point.

In Kaz Tanahashi & Robert Aitken’s translation, our master Dogen says “To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.”

So, the arrows don’t go out from our ego, or rather, sure they do, all the time. But the invitation here is to allow the world to present itself.

So, you’re sitting down in a group and your neighbor’s tummy is growling. That is the Dharma presenting itself. You’re sitting at home and the cat decides to climb all over you. That is the Dharma presenting itself. Or, you’re sitting and the four year old stomps in and demands your attention. That’s the Dharma presenting itself.

Do this and the way is thrown wide open.

As simple as that…

And, as hard.

I see how on this day in 1934 Bonnie & Clyde met their fate. They share this anniversary date with the burning of the mad friar Savonarola who met his fate on this day in 1498.

I see there is some move within the Roman church to rehabilitate Savonarola, for reasons beyond my understanding.

Not sure when they’ll try to rehabilitate Bonnie or Clyde.

In the meantime this day allows us to admire some great Blue Grass…

Just learned that Frank Edward Ray died last week.

He was ninety-one & it had been some forty years since he led twenty-six children to safety after a truly horrendous kidnapping and mass burial.

Good to recall people who really are ordinary, who step up to the plate when the time comes.

Good bye, Ed.

And, thanks!