LIVING IN AN BUDDHIST PARADISE

Field Entry: Rustbelt Nirvana

—A Photopoetic Study—

There’s a common misunderstanding about where enlightenment is supposed to happen. People picture it in places like San Francisco—expensive calm, curated stillness. Or in Japan—temples, gardens, centuries of deliberate quiet. Places where serenity has been. . . —well, landscaped.

But there’s another kind of quiet. The kind that shows up after everything else leaves. Out in the Rust Belt, where industry packed up and took ambition with it, what you’re left with isn’t just absence—it’s something closer to completion. No demand, no supply. No upward mobility, no particular need for it either. Not because anyone chose it. . . but because there’s nothing left to choose from.

And if you squint at it just right, that starts to look suspiciously like Buddhism. Not the polished version. Not the exported, gift-shop version.

The accidental kind.

No attachments—because there’s nothing to hold onto. No desire—because there’s nothing left to chase. No self—because there’s not much left to define it with. You might even call it . . . efficient.

So this piece is a small observation from that landscape. A kind of roadside sutra. A hymn to the idea that if you remove enough, eventually you arrive somewhere.

Now—if anyone feels inclined to sing this to the tune of Amish Paradise, you’re welcome to it. The Amish are filtering in, as a matter of fact. It all seems structurally compatible.

No obligation to hear Weird Al with this, of course. That would imply desire.

— Black Cloud,

Chief Poetic Justice Warrior of the C-of-C-C