When the alarm I’d set earlier went off, I turned off my lights and walked outside. Stood facing north. The dry leaves of the trees rustled in the breeze—it was only May, and we were under a red-flag warning already. The jasmine blooming behind my landlord’s fence perfumed the air.
Continue reading Satellites and Space JunkCategory Archives: Reflections
Trustworthy
Sometimes I wonder if I’m cheating by calling my morning sit “meditation”. My mind tends to roam free over my “problems.” Usually first the problem of trying to buy a house, and trying in my mind to fit the available properties into my requirements, and then pleading with myself to let it go and wait for the right thing to happen. It’s not like I can turn these houses over in my mind hard enough to turn them into something they’re not.
Continue reading TrustworthyFeed Me
The Pine Siskens showed up this week. I’d heard that it was an irruption year, but this is the first I’ve seen them during morning meditation.
While I watched yesterday, a House Finch, a bit larger than the siskens, approached them and began making what seemed to be begging motions, mouth open, at them, while they grabbed sunflower chips off the fence.
It seemed too early for the finch to be a juvenile. Tonight I consulted the Sonoma County Bird Breeding Atlas and see that April 6 is usually the first nesting date, so it was indeed an adult.
It’s funny to me. Why not? Who doesn’t want to be a baby sometime? Maybe even the finches grow weary of being a grownup.
Shelter in place
The new pup is as sweet as the young Laika was, and maybe twice as stubborn. Liesl will require me to be stronger, another good teacher of boundaries. Being so much smaller, though, she’s easier in many respects…I can simply pick her up, and she travels well. If we ever get to travel again.
Continue reading Shelter in placeA Child’s Dog
Of Men, and Moth, and Non-Monogamy
Bang
The Vagrant
A response to Book of Serenity Case #1: The World Honored One Ascends the Seat
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The Longing
In the spaces that fill everything else, there is the longing. The longing seeks an object. The longing is background; I want to say background noise, but then you will think of it as noise and it is not. The longing seeps into your conscious and unconscious life, like water into sand.
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Transcribed from a Sloppy Journal
Back from the conference and feeling restless but not motivated to do anything. Continue reading Transcribed from a Sloppy Journal