it's all impermanence-or whatever

Dear Readers-I've returned from my California adventures. My LA daughter lives in a hobbit house behind a real house. I will need pictures of the passionflowers that drip down over her doorway when I figure out my new computer. She has a garden and a leetle building where her bathroom and washer/dryer are. And she has plants and cacti and a fire pit and a clothes line. I loved being there. And she'a a lover of fine food so we ate all kinds of different food, Persian and Korean and Central American. She's becoming a chef, food inventor with her lust for new and interesting and delicious.

Then to the Bay area with daughter the other and we saw the Picasso exhibit at the new DeYoung, truly a gorgeous museum. We also walked around Haight street and tried on boots. Lovely buttery boots that made us feel sexy and invincible.

The retreat was again in the glorious Spirit Rock with heated floors and California groovy food and wild turkeys and deer and frogs and turkey vultures. Silence.

In the airport, we found out that while we were gone, our house had been broken into. And my laptop was stolen. Crap. When they tell you to back up your work, they mean, back up your work, dummy.

So I' ve been in serious grief since Sunday. I don't even know what was lost yet. I guess the only fortunate thing is that I've downloaded most all of my poetry. But. Crap.

Javier Sicilia, a Mexican poet, has been traveling Mexico with the Caravan for Peace With Justice and Dignity after his son was killed by a drug cartel. He stopped writing poetry in protest. And he's moving people all over the country. Bless him.

I'll survive the loss of my computer. What I was most concerned about when I heard something had happened at home was that a kat had been injured... And my computer was seven years old. Maybe some child is using it for school and it's not in a pawn shop somewhere.

By the way, while on retreat, I saw a stag there for the first time. I always see the does and fawns, by now they are yearlings. But I saw a buck, twice. The first time he was coming out of the mist-like a magic dreamy deer. The second time, he was standing on the hillside right beside the door of the zendo. I've decided to grow a pair of antlers and get sticks and twigs in my fur. And be wild.