What is a Zen Board? A Zen Board is a piece of grey paper on cardboard, a plastic tray to hold water and a brush. You dip the brush in the water and write on the grey paper attached to the cardboard. The water turns the paper black while it’s wet. When the water drys the page returns to grey - an adult equivalent of disappearing ink, except that once it is gone you can't hold a light up to the page and make the ink reappear. The purpose of the Zen Board is to teach you to live in the moment, to relish the instant that your brush strokes are wet on the page, rather than worry about what it said in the past or in the future. The obvious need to apply this philosophy to my love life must be what prompted the gift.

Rather than dwelling on the more dismal romantic metaphorical meanings of the Zen Board, I saw yet another message. I had been thinking about the column the editor had told me I could write for Street and I had been spending a lot of time wondering what I should or could write.

I realized that any column I wrote would be a lot like the Zen Board. Each issue, I'd spill my guts onto the page or worse type something really fast to make the deadline.

My brother's photograph’s accompanying the page captures the photographic vision of the Zen Board. We are so used to snapping a picture and capturing a solitary moment with our camera, but David was able to capture the rushes and passes of life over an extended period of time simply by keeping the camera's shutter open. Instead of painting black on grey, the light paints white on the black background of the night. The picture reminds me how fleeting each moment in our life truly is. Our presence in a solitary moment or even a succession of moments is gone, leaving only a ghostly image on photographic paper.

Even this periodical magazine follows the Zen Board pattern. The ink goes on the page black as black can be. The wonderful circulation process puts the paper in racks and shelves across Ogden. The column is inky black and wet and juicy enough so that people will read it each time. Finally, whether the column succeeds or not, within a week or two, my words will be lining the inside of a dog kennel. With results like that it is easy to remain humble. Of course, my copy of the column will be tucked neatly away in a scrapbook, next to my brother's picture.

Unfortunately, this column is beginning to feel a lot like a TV pilot where you become groggy with all the set-ups and introductions. I do hope that this column also becomes an interactive dialogue with the community. I even got my own email address for the column, zenboard@yahoo.com, so that you can email me and tell me just what you think of me. Don't hold back.

Also, as an important caveat, the website - www.zenboard.com is NOT affiliated with this column. I thought I'd check it out just in case and typed in the address and found myself on an escort service site. Please don't think I can provide you with women - remember, it was me who got the Zen Board for Valentine's Day.

I haven't done any research on the topic, but I'm sure if I were to go back 10, 20, 30 or even 150 years that the local paper would contain rants of various columnists on the pressing topics of the day. The Zen Board that we called the 2002 Winter Olympics has already started to fade. The recurrent Zen Board known as the Ogden City Mall is slowly being erased before our very eyes. The next Zen Board project for that location is apparently some type of outdoor mall, ala the vacant Gateway. (Does anyone else think it is strange to have an outdoor mall in a place as cold or hot as this?) Things change and things stay the same. The message of the Zen Board is to not take ourselves so seriously, to realize the success of today will be the boondoggle of tomorrow. And even more importantly, this column will make the bottom of a birdcage very tidy

Kent Winward - Summer 2002

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