Hello and welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus. I'm your host Thomas McConkey. Thanks so much for listening today. I have a geek warning to issue. It's not an apology.

I will not apologize for the geeky nature of this episode, but I will warn you, it waxes a little bit

literary in a geeky kind of way. It's funny, I studied literature in college in undergrad like a thousand years ago,

and I have distanced myself from literature since then. Sadly, I want to make more room for it in my

life, but it pops up here and there in extremely satisfying ways.

And I just thought I would put a little montage together for you today that involves a little

literary device, but of course brings us right back into the territory of mindfulness,

of transformation and what we're all doing here.

So here we go. Let's begin. Where do I want to start? There's a really beautiful writer that I admire.

His name is Stephen Herod Buner. In his title in Soling Language, he talks about the literary

device of Duende. Many people will not know immediately what Duende is, so I'm going to give you

the example that comes from Boehner's book, and we're just going to talk about it a little

bit to frame this episode up. So to describe it, Buneer takes a short poem from the poet Antonio Machado,

and I'm just going to read it to you, and then follow it with Buehner's commentary so here are Machado's words

people possess four things that are no good at sea rudder anchor oars and the fear of going down

one more time.

People possess four things that are no good at sea.

Rudder, anchor, oars, and the fear of going down.

So good.

The inner comments, even in this short of a piece, there's that same progression.

You start in one world and suddenly find yourself in another, one concerned more with invisibles than the wood of oars and rudder, the dense metal of anchor.

Buehner goes on to describe what Duende is.

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