I don't know why I'm going to Burning Man. It's been the most stressful experience ever. I now have a ticket but no ticket to park my car....I think I registered for the sale for parking tickets but I'm not sure and my computer is no help. Anyway, my last experience with purchasing a ticket was entirely awful after sitting there for 2 hours watching the little wheel go round and round and then the site crashed.

Sheesh. And now I've spent real money on a ticket and a bike to ride around on. I won't believe I'm actually attending until I'm actually there. And my car needs struts, whatever that is, and I should probably get them fixed before I go.

Whine, whine, whine.

However, I made granola today and I'm waiting for bread to come out of the oven. I'm having bread and fake butter for dinner. I promised Felix we would go swim/walk and it might be dark before we get there but, lordy, I need to go de-stress.

There are two rough looking guys down the street who are cleaning out a house so the owner can sell it. They are missing teeth and they have ropey arms, the kind of guys who have worked hard, been homeless a bit, spent a lot of time outside using their bodies. I've hired them to mow down the effing blackberries, nettles, horse tail, etc behind my house. It's a massive steep hill but they're willing to give it a go. They're even willing to cut down the laurel which will spring up in no time. They're very sweet. They witnessed the pit bull attack yesterday and one of them even hugged me.

I could be where they are, except for some luck.

Bless them.

Felix and I narrowly missed a pit bull attack this morning. He ran out at Felix with fierce barking and many teeth. I screamed and the neighbors came running. The guy who was the owner showed up with a big stick, yelling at the dog and got him away from Felix. Felix was completely unperturbed and uninjured. Sheesh. My heart was pounding.

Recently bought a book by Edward Espe Brown called 'Most Important Point'. He's the Tassahara Bread Book guy. I've used that book since the 70's and I still do.

Here's one of my 'babies' Hazel making her first loaf of bread. XXXX She asked if I'd show her and so I did.

Anyway, the book is beautiful and I've downloaded a few of his dharma talks. He laughs all through them because he finds himself so funny and human and humble and full of faults and mistakes. He's not the slightest bit spiritual or 'Buddhist' or anything. Even if he is a Zen priest. He's just a real person.

Well, time to sit with my friends.

Some of my favorite people about to engage in a snowball fight at Mt Lassen in California. The teenage boys did a lot of shrieking and belching. Because they are kinda gross. Ah, hormones.

Off to Manton, California tomorrow. Unaccountably nervous. Me and Felix. He needs heartworm medicine which the vet today didn't have... there's a Costco on the way to the lodge so we'll be stopping there to fill the prescription. This trip has been very costly, between the car shite and the dog so I better enjoy myself!

AND I got a ticket to Burning Man which is a scant month away, another road trip and I have to get it together with clothes and food and a crappy bike to ride around on the playa. As soon as I return from Manton, I'll start planning that trip. Sheesh.

O the trials of this first world person!!

The day I return from Manton, I'm teaching the Dharma for a friend in the evening. The topic is translated as suffering or dissatisfaction. And tanha which means 'thirst'. Thirst for things to be different or things to stay the same. Meanwhile the neighbors are making a terrific racket with a power washer and a hummingbird is at the feeder.

I've lost 7 pounds without trying. Or rather without weighing myself at all for a while. I'm eating so much less. The last retreat reset some kind of inner clock.

So I'll take some Dharma books with me and my computer and write something about dukkha (suffering), rehearse it and then speak without notes. That's how I roll.

Snake

a loop of cold lightening

hangs from the lowest branch

as she looks up into the dark

coiling and uncoiling

she lifts her airless body skyward

at the top

a mother bird scatters

chirps anxiously from a nearby tree

chirps chirps chirps

into the silence

at first I thought to stop this story

from going forward

snake unhinging her jaws

to consume an egg

or a chick

I would get a stick

lift the snake away from the nest

restore my version of order

kindness

what of the snake and her children

she is doing what she does

to survive

find the pulsing life

dragonflies

baby birds

frogs

who decides who lives

who dies

what is the right answer

is there a right answer

do you love the snake too?

Well, I did it. I borrowed money from a credit union who underwrites loans for solar panels and installation and they're gonna be here in September to install. My neighbor gave me permission to top his (ug) arbor vitae 5 feet. I mean, really, they are so tall they are growing higher than the roof line.

Then I'll have a low-interest loan payment for the next ten years, if I live that long.

And I've done my bit for global warming.

AND

My car is getting fixed all up and shite, I'm spending money like I have some. New tires, air filter, new battery, oil change etc. And I need new struts soon (whaaaaa) but I'm saving $ (?) by not flying to California. Maybe. It's the annual Mount Lassen/Manton trip and I'm bringing Felix this time. Me and the dog in my wee car. We're camping a few nights. I hope his nerves don't keep him up and woofing all night. We remember the CBD fiasco so I won't be trying that again. He'll have a blast once we get there, kids to play with and the pond to swim in.

But. I went to a new shop (to me) called Revolution Repair owned and operated by gender fluid folks. Trans men and women, old fashioned lesbians and the like. It was glorious after my time with the dealership shop. They took all day but they were so nice and thorough and did extra stuff like sprayed peppermint oil on my engine to deter rodents. I'm going back there, for sure.

Speaking of rodents, my tenant and I have seen GIANT rats in the garden and they are digging giant holes. Sigh. So Joey, the fabulous girlfriend of my tenant, is buying traps that electrocute them, not so Buddhist, I know. But ew.

Ok, I just saw a tiny bug crawling around INSIDE my computer screen. I think it might be the beginning of the end when the bugs and rats and blackberries take over and humankind becomes piles of bleached bones.

My 'roommate' returns from a conference today. She has three more weeks here and then she returns to New Orleans. And my house will be all mine again.

Today was busy with meetings and meetings and a gathering at my house to discuss (what else?) the dharma which means the way things are, the law of the universe, the teachings of the Buddha. I actually had a realization this week with a definition of dependent co-arising. I won't try to describe here but it helped to understand a bit more the relationship between our actions and their long range ramifications.

In simple terms, we effect our world by how we move through our world. Anger begets anger. Kindness begets kindness. We may not see the immediate results but it is there.

I recently saw a documentary called 'The Biggest Little Farm' which was filmed over 7-8 years on a 200 acre piece of property outside LA, in the midst of their terrible drought. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfDTM4JxHl8 The young people involved brought the land back from the desert by learning (sometimes) hard lessons about the nature of life. Pests, predators, ill animals, all came into play as they learned the balance of nature; brutal, exacting and persistent. They fed the soil and in return, the soil fed them, literally. Without pesticides, without shooting the coyotes (!), holding their anger, frustration and sorrow for the way things are.

We humans are too made of the elements and as we forget that, we perish. As I sit here in my little house, I look out at the trees and the bird feeders and the holes in the lettuce leaves and I think about the way I want everything to look, to be and I'll never be rid of the bamboo in my side yard or the blackberries that threaten to climb into my garden from the greenbelt. That plant is hardy! I do appreciate the berries for making jam but they prick and bite so care is always important.

In a few weeks, I'll be driving through the drought affected California scrub. It is a wonder to see what does live in a dried out area. One of the things the movie makers did was install an infrared camera on the perimeter of their property to try to figure out what was out there beyond their fences. Coyotes, raccoons, cougars, a badger, a weasel, owls, all sorts of nocturnal critters invisible in the daytime. So much to wonder at, what we don't see. The wide world is still full of magic.

I met a friend yesterday for a dog walk and a Dharma chat. The Buddha encouraged his followers to hang out with Kalyanamita- literally spiritual friends. When I hike with Holly, we talk about the meaning of co-arising or causes and conditions. Rachel is on a journey of discovery which includes her study of deep trauma, Judith has a steady sitting practice and holds her own pain with grace. I am so grateful for these friends who are studying and probing and questioning the causes and remedies for suffering.

I feel that those of you who read here are also deeply practicing and deeply living your lives; with your passions and disappointments and thoughtful investigations into the nature of existence, all existence.

The babies flow on and on. Parents do the best they can to raise their children with the least amount of harm. I remind myself that most of us do a pretty good job. The news cycle is full of aberrant parenting because the good parents aren't 'news'. My neighbors are raising their twin girls with the grandparents living next door. They have learned to ride their bikes under their grandmother's watchful eye. She tells me 'bonita, bonita' when she watches me water my garden. Their little white dog runs from house to house.

When we were done with our walk, Glenn asked if I wanted to meditate in the park. We found a place surrounded by flowers and sat on the grass. Eventually it began to rain, very softly. I could feel the drops in my hair and on my skin. As first I thought we should move or stop but I remembered that the Buddha instructed his followers find a quiet place, sit under a tree and meditate. We could hear children playing in the playground and there was some large machinery nearby but we continued to sit, the rain gently blessing us.

Right now the house is still. The dog is at my feet, the cat is lying in a patch of sunlight. Gratitude flows through me.

Dears-

The weather here is beautiful, cool and sunny. I'm in a funk but this morning I went into my studio and threw some colors on canvas. Now the long awaited dog walk and a trip to the pea patch to weed and water and harvest.

A few nights ago I went to a reading by Ocean Vuong for his new book, "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous." I'm still in a state of wonderment. I have his book of poetry, "Night Sky With Exit Wounds" after encountering his work in the NYT. I taped them to my kitchen wall. You know when you read something that makes the landscape tip and suddenly the trees and sky are unfamiliar and you've entered a new reality? His work and his Q and A after he read!!! Please look for him on youtube.

My silent retreat was transformative. Sitting with nuns who have given their lives to the study of the Dharma, how to explain the warmth and kindness of their regard for all of us? I'm still mining the work I did in that week. It's taken me a while to 'come back' or maybe I've stepped over a threshold into some new understanding.

My little cat just caught and ate a spider while I was sitting here.

Being with the mystery today.

Garden bounty. The lettuce has slugs and the strawberries are sour but they grew in my pea patch and I'm grateful. Going on a week of a rotten cold with an impressive cough but going to work tomorrow in spite of it all. Taking cough syrup and throat lozenges and if it gets too bad, a percocet to keep the cough away. On Friday I leave for a week in the forest to sit with the Vipassana nuns.  I offered a ride to someone on the ride board and when I said 'the nuns' retreat' she said, 'whaa?' Oh dear. well, we'll have a few hours to chat on the way there.

In the West we don't really understand the concept of monastic life...well the Catholics have monks and nuns but in the East, the monastic community is an integral part of everyday life. You see robed men and women everywhere, in the open air markets and walking on the streets. And they go on alms rounds with their bowls. Every household supports the monastic community with food, shelter, clothing and medicine. In return, the monks and nuns offer the teaching of the Buddha freely, all who ask. It's a major renunciation, leaving everything behind to live in a monastery and be dependent on the generosity of the surrounding community. A tradition that has been going on for more than 2600 years. Unfortunately, the wealth is not equally distributed. Nuns are more often neglected and will disrobe because they are unsupported. In the West it is even more dire. There are a few nun communities on the West coast with women who grew disenchanted with the obvious misogyny of Eastern monasteries and have planted themselves in small communities in California. We who live out here have the benefit of their deep practice and humility. I've had the good fortune to sit with a number of remarkable women over the years and this retreat will be no exception.

It's just too bad that the larger community is largely unaware of the plight of Western (and Eastern) nuns. The patriarchy is a mean and powerful bastard. 

So the young woman I am picking up Friday morning to drive to the retreat will be 'treated' to a lecture. Or maybe I've gotten my righteous indignation out of my system and we will have a quiet discussion of the nuns' situation...

The teachings from these gentle, wise women is truly a rare privilege. Let's hope I'm not still hacking and snorting with this everlovin' cold.

Memorial day redux

At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border

BY WILLIAM E. STAFFORD

This is the field where the battle did not happen,

where the unknown soldier did not die.

This is the field where grass joined hands,

where no monument stands,

and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,

unfolding their wings across the open.

No people killed—or were killed—on this ground

hallowed by neglect and an air so tame

that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

William Stafford was a poet who spent time in prison for his pacifism during the second world war. He wrote a poem every day, even the day he died. When asked if a poem he had written didn't rise to his standards he said, "I just lower my standards." He was a mentor and friend to Naomi Shihab Nye. When I stood with Women in Black in downtown Seattle during the Gulf war, I held a photo of Stafford. 

Not waxing rapsodic

Ok. So.

Annie, who doesn't hike, suggested for out last day together that we go for a hike. I'm game, you know me, a regular hiking fool.

I carry the 10 essentials (thanks for asking-whistle, compass, space blanket, waterproof matches, extra clothes, sunscreen and sunglasses, map, firestarter and first aid kit) in my hiking backpack. Extra water is important too. I'd add to that, protection from bugs-stay tuned. Of course, I'm 3000 miles away from my trusty backpack. 

We drive to east Jesus, way up in the North country, almost Canada, passing beautiful lakes and creeks and occasional fishermen/women. Arriving at the trailhead, there were quite a few flies and I turned to Annie and said, 'bug spray' and she said, 'nope.'

Ahhh so we started out gayly enough but these bastards:

began tormenting us by swarming and landing on our faces, necks, hands and anywhere else they could bite us. We were sweating and swatting and at one point I felt something warm on my face and it was blood. And no 10 essentials. We prevailed and ended up coming back down the trail on our butts because it was so slippery and wet. No matter. The insects were merciless. At the trailhead we lost our minds and COULDN'T LOCATE THE EFFING CAR. We went down road after road, becoming more and more disoriented. When I had one bar on my phone I called 911 and got a ranger. Thanks to the lawd for GPS tracking. He got us out of biting insect hell but I gotta say, I have the worst bites on my hands and the back of my neck. I couldn't sleep that night because every time I closed my eyes, I saw swarms of horrible flies. 

My sister doesn't hike so she doesn't know about flies between May and July when everyone sits around on their screened-in porches and watches the sunset.

I'm still scratching.

As a Buddhist, I revere life. Most of the time.  But I'll certainly squash a black fly in a heart beat. They are tiny dicks. 

The North Country

Me and Katrina, my oldest friend. We were young mothers together back in the 70's. Her son Jared just opened a restaurant in town (delish!) and Katrina and I didn't have enough time together. Not at all. We didn't even get to the 'what happened to so and so' before I had to leave for the northernmost point in New York State to visit Anne, my sister. Gotta come back. 

The Raquette River in Potsdam. Just off there was a dinky farmer's market with three youngsters playing their fiddles.

The Episcopalian Church on the banks of the river. 

The (very white) momma and her baby.

The view from my sister's back porch. There are orioles at the bird feeder, peepers as night, bird song all day. During the night there was thunder, lightening and rain. The moon came out brilliant and round behind the clouds for a few minutes. During the day we went to the Birchbark Bookstore back in the woods. The fellow there has a series of linked rooms, more like a labyrinth really, crammed with used books. At first they're alphabetized in sections but the farther back you go, it's more helter skelter. The shelves are all nailed to birth bark trunks. Wow. And he has an outhouse. 

There are Amish farmers here, in their horse drawn buggies by the side of the road. There are wild turkeys and deer. Deep wet woods from tons of rain. Lots of bugs.

Today we're planting starts, going to the gym (complete with country music!) and hiking? kayaking? We stayed up watching Iliza Shlesinger on Netflix and falling off the couch laughing.

Tomorrow we'll cross the border into Canada across the St Lawrence-told you she's far north. We're gonna walk the canal, visit the National Gallery of Canada and have high tea at the Chateau Laurier-fancy!!!

I grew up in this State, south from here in Syracuse where Katrina and I met. I am feeling nostalgic as we drive through the little towns here, the clusters of beautiful old homes, many build of limestone and brick, with add-on screened-in porches, gingerbread curlicues, some in good shape and many in disrepair. According to Annie, the folks around are quite poor. Small farmers can't make a go of it and are working at convenience stores and gas stations to make ends meet. The winters are brutal with lots of snow and gray skies. Very cold. I remember when spring arrived when I was a kid. Suddenly, it seemed, the air smelled of mud and there were buds on the trees and trillium at the edges of the forested areas. Here there are clumps of trillium everywhere. Along the river where Annie lives are small homes and mostly elderly folk. Annie knows everyone and watches out for people, the next door neighbors, the recently widowed gal she stopped to talk to yesterday.

When I think of Seattle, I feel the burden of the masses of people who live there, the masses of folks who are crowding the highways and jostling for affordable housing. I feel the burden on the land and water, the greedy reach for luxury and comfort and the suffering of the natural world that is being pushed out by massive housing construction everywhere. It's quite a contrast.

Here, the wind up clock is ticking and one of the cats is snoring. Sparky has a bit of a weight problem but we're working on it.

The day begins with red wing blackbirds in the reeds, calling to one another.

Dance

This is Clark, surely one of the most magical people I know. He disappeared for 2 years and then, poof! appeared again with green scarfie things to twirl around while dancing. He sings and makes altars. I love him sooooo much.

Sometimes there are people who you are so grateful to have met. You love them right away and you take them back no matter what kinda trouble they've gotten themselves into. That's Clark. No matter what. You love them while they're trying to learn how to love themselves.

You just love them through everything.

I know you are wondering what is going on here. The family is burning the cord to seal it, twisting and burning. The baby is on the momma under the pan. Quite effective. I saw it the next day.

Then there's the family with a goat who sleeps on a dog bed in their room.

I tell you. As long as I live, I will not have seen everything as in: "I've seen everything..."

Enjoy the day. It is beautiful here. I attacked the laurel and whacked it WAY back. It likes that treatment. It is plotting to come back even stronger than before. I can hear the leaves and trunks whispering even from here.

If you are wondering what exactly the cauliflower pizza crust from TJs tastes like, I will tell you. It tastes like a soggy saltine cracker mash which has been formed into a pancake and after it's cooked, the edges are slightly crispy. A delivery method for sauce, fake sausage and cheese. Not an incomparable NY style thin crust made of WHEAT. Nope. There are some things that just can't be substituted.

If you  haven't watched the Netflix Knock Down The House, please help yourself. Four women, running for Congress, including the sparkling AOC. All of them deserved to win, only one did. But bless them for trying and for showing us what courage and vulnerability looks like.

To facilitate a Alateen meeting tonight. Another group of awesome people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypHZbtqSU48

Go. Now.

See this movie, produced by Spike Lee. It will heal you and give you hope.

My friend Nancy and I went tonight and the theatre was full of church going folks who hollered and clapped and 'um-hum'd' and when we left our feet did not touch the ground. And Nancy said this is the medicine that drives out the poison. And she's right.

Such good fortune to be close to this beautiful urban forest. Where Felix and I go almost every day. Someone in labor tonight and I'll be getting a call so better go to bed. Saw babies and pregnant mommas all day. Tired, very tired. 

For being so wee, hummingbirds are pretty fierce. They don't share at the feeder and they 'chirp' very loudly at one another to move aside.

In spite of that, their flashing magenta and green startle my heart.



Time to visit my pea patch. At least there is no roaming chicken to dig and eat my starts.

Love after love  The time will come When, with elation, You will greet yourself arriving At your own door, in your own mirror, And each will smile at the other's welcome,   And say, sit here, Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart To itself, to the stranger who has loved you   All your life, whom you ignored For another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,   The photographs, the desperate notes, Peel your image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.                                       Derek Walcott

“Will Exult Over You With Loud Singing” by Michael Lavers Posted: 17 Apr 2019 12:00 AM PDT Michael Lavers WILL EXULT OVER YOU WITH LOUD SINGING That’s my dad, I say, pointing to the man in the photograph with thin grey hair reflecting river-light. And that’s my mom. My arch of nose, my chin. I’m talking to my children, talking the way I do about things that are not lost, that are still here, knowing that it’s no use, that time and decay do not obey language; that the dumb flesh of a tree, for instance, doesn’t care about Samantha, which word my son, ten years from now, will carve into it; doesn’t distinguish between the pain of his love for her, and any old pain: woodpecker, beetle, axe, frost, flame. * * * Once, when I said she could not play with a dead mouse, my daughter wailed so loud I thought she might break. This was in Great Falls, next to a riverbank wafted with small blue moths. We’d strayed from the playground near an overpass where people seemed to be sleeping or hovering around fires. She yelled Mine, astounding even herself, as if at the end of the scream she thought there might be nothing left, nothing of her, nothing to listen to in this world. * * * The sad mechanic exercise … —Tennyson My mother was finishing a master’s degree in psychiatric nursing, writing a thesis on gambling addiction, on people who wear diapers so they can stay at slot machines for hours, even days, and when we asked her if we should try to get the last course waived and the degree granted before it was too late, she said nothing, as if keeping new and hidden counsel with herself, or with someone not present. And my father, dead ten years later of a heart attack in the bathroom of a movie theatre—the ticket-taker panting out that sad mechanic CPR—he must have felt a terrible silence growing inside him, or a noise too loud to hear, the crashing stillness after a long inertia, the indifference of that small wet machine suddenly reluctant to bear for one more second the weight of his body. As if the soul at the end of a long journey finally stepped through a door and put down its luggage. Thinking, maybe, if he listened hard enough he could make out why stars had lost their willingness to dazzle, or where they were going—through what dark nimbus or invisible crack—and why without him, why so fast. * * * Once as a child I drove a hammer’s claw into the trunk of one of the small maples lining our driveway, peeling bark away in strips as thick as fingers to the underflesh, the soft wet honey-gold, tinted a bit off-pink, off-green. It was like being, or imagining that I could be, everywhere at once, light right there in the palm of my hand, made still and, well, mine, in ruins. Light’s unsingable psalm, a thing outside our sad economy of come and go. A brief end to stagnation, briefly glimpsed. My father was angry, but mostly bewildered. He stared for a while, then said only that the hammer wasn’t mine to take, and that the tree wasn’t mine to do whatever I thought I was doing to it. And what are you doing to it, he said, and I said I don’t know. * * * Poor flesh, love says, baring her teeth. Poor agitation of heat, of stars, shaking and far away. Van Gogh in the final letter to his brother Theo: Well, my own work, I am risking my life for it and my reason has half foundered because of it—that’s all right. It’s true no metaphor can save us, store us like gravel in the cheek of Hallelujah Creek, Creek of Unclottable Light. But that’s alright. Why not exist, at least for each other, in love and thickly streaked and made to end, believing if not everything at least one of the minor prophets, maybe, Zephaniah: he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. * * * That’s my mom I say to my kids, that look she has like mine, of somebody enduring happiness, expecting grief. And that, I say, is her diploma, framed and hanging on the wall. This is your breakfast, bananas and toast and jam, our one life, ours in the only sense that matters, something that we make … make what? Come forth, I think, like stars, all flicker and distance, prodigal and dim, but not so dim that if they vanished we would not weep every night, or stop trying, though we knew we couldn’t, to describe them, to remember.

Dears,

Just streamed a Netflix series called 'Special', written and acted by a gay man with CP. It's wonderful and funny and poignant and all that.

Did I say funny? And gay sex and swearing...

Each episode is only 15 minutes and I can tell you, it'll leave you wanting more.

More please, Ryan O'Connell.