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The Cop and I have been on a Leonard Cohen jag, kicked off by The Cop hearing this interview on NPR. We watched the documentary, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, and I’ve been listening to his music this morning.

We feel an extra connection, too, because Cohen practices with Joshu Sasaki Roshi, who is the head teacher at the zendo we attend.

And nerdily enough, both The Cop and I are great fans of how Cohen uses language. Not just in his poetry or song lyrics, but even just in the way he speaks extemporaneously.

Quiet day today — a usual Sunday. Cleaning while listening to music and podcasts, general household maintenance projects. And this evening we’ll go to my favorite Mexican place. The Cop disowned the place during the holidays, when we went only to find that they were closed for a corporate event. Employees were outside, distributing tickets for free margaritas and guacamole, so we’ll go and use those, and perhaps The Cop will forgive them for not calling us to let us know they’d be closed for a private function.

Oh, I have the NPR interview playing in the background as I write, and I just heard Terry Gross talking a bit about Leonard Cohen’s work, how it so frequently is about lust and love and appetites, and then she asks: “Did you become a Buddhist because your desires were so dominant?”

Haha! That’s always such a funny question. I think people often assume similar things about yogis — that mind, spirit and body are somehow incompatible, or always destined to be at odds. People always worry about desire and Buddhists — like we’re these huge ascetics. I always want to answer the question in a robotic voice: I am a Budd-hist there-fore I de-ny all feel-ings.”

Cohen rocks because there is desire in his work, and spirituality, and humanness. Well worth checking out the documentary, too, because he is delightfully straightforward and humorous and disarming. Not at all the tortured Buddhist one might expect