There's a sparrow outside my window, telling me it's time to rise.

I walk past this closed gate almost every day. When a breeze is blowing, the sound of chimes calls from up the stairwell.

The wind creates impromptu concerts all around the city, some cheerful, some brusque. The most beautiful are from a balcony on Church street. The notes are clear and sweet. For a moment I'm hearing the magical harmony of a distant time, a storybook place.

The childish part of being an adult wears me down;
the child-like part nourishes and frees me.

Things are falling into place in funny ways. And there are the street finds this past month: a dollar and 19 cents, a silver edged floral china plate, two books (Hats & Eyeglasses, and Seabiscuit), a handful of screws, a purple heart, and a lemon. Then there was a work interview during a party-I was already dressed up, ready to go. How cool is that? Gifts happen!

there were the nice pictures
of the nice lake
and a nice bit of philosophy
to fit nicely underneath
but so little truth
in the pat cleverness
so much churning
under it all
it is true
the truest love
is not always nice

Lake Tahoe
near Incline Village, Nevada



The lake was tranquil Sunday, and the scent of sunshine on conifers warmed its tree-lined shores.

Because I believe in time as a flexible dimension, and because I believe in prayer, I believe in backwards prayer. I believe we can ease the suffering of those who came before us. Today was an odd day. Collecting materials and papers for taxes brought me into contact with other documents and cards and letters, some of which were hard to revisit. But I got a lot done, and at the end of the afternoon, went to the hill. As taught a couple years back, I practiced the fundamentals of tenshingoso, a Shintaido form that one might experience as wordless prayer. Even the stretches at the beginning felt exquisitely beautiful.

Late this evening, memories came up of kids I babysat when I was a kid, kids who were being hurt, and I didn't know how to fix things.

It may just be a self-comforting delusion to pray backwards, or maybe not. Either way, it can't hurt to pray now for those kids back then, can it?

We do feel for people, and sometimes I think when we let our hearts feel, there is some sympathy, some healing (some would say divine light) that's shared from person to person, and surfaces across time to give support in a moment long past, or perhaps in a moment some day to come.

Drawing the stick sword with the left hand from a pretend scabbard on the right side felt very different—but no more awkward, really, than when I first learned sword with the right hand two and a half years ago.

I was back on the hill Wednesday morning, and practice was going well enough, a little lukewarm perhaps. On impulse, I switched hands, mirroring the traditional techniques, something we'd briefly played with during a workshop in January. I raised the sword to sky, and lowered it back to horizon. It felt like a spark of cheer. I cut sky over and over with a figure-8 motion, just I had earlier in the more familiar position, but now with little effort.

So, both sides of my body, left and right, got to equally experience wielding the weighty stick.

I'm not at all ambidextrous. Maybe my right side/left brain had been long overworked, in practice as in real life, becoming a little reluctant, even resistant. Welcoming the dormant left side during this practice left my body feeling better integrated than it has in a while. I came into balance, into wholeness. (Oddly, I also felt shorter, rooted into the earth. I felt less like a helium balloon threatening to escape the planet's atmosphere.)

The effect felt dramatic, as though the practice had corrected a core problem.

I felt very very good.

This evening marked the start of Passover, which is celebrated yearly by Jews, and is also an integral element in the yearly celebration of Easter by Christians. But this morning, in Isreal and elsewhere around the world, thousands of Jews were up at sunrise to pray for blessings for the sun, a ritual that occurs only once every 28 years where tradition has it that the sun returns to the spot where God first created it.

It hasn't been unusual in the history of humankind for cultures to seek blessings or favors from the sun. It's a more rare and rather lovely gesture to seek blessings for the sun.

A flower is a seduction,
an invitation to the bee.
It's a valentine to life.

no table
no reason
no time-
sit and drink cha
from an empty cup

Little lights sparked on the pavement as I walked, as though the flat black buttons on my jacket were mirrors or crystals conducting sunlight. Yesterday morning, the reflection from the black microwave door caught my attention. It's intriguing how light flows from dark surfaces.

The park recovered from its dark night. The flowers danced; the grasses flowed, bright waves in the wind. A hummingbird perched above, two bumblebees were digging into earth, and the Greek who tells his pet 'good dog' wandered through. It's a joyful space.

The photo below is intentional-haha-taken in gravity stretch.

Look far.

‘All human life has its seasons, and no one’s personal chaos can be permanent: winter, after all, does not last forever, does it? There is summer, too, and spring, and though sometimes when branches stay dark and the earth cracks with ice, one thinks they will never come, that spring, that summer, but they do, and always.’
Truman Capote
from capote: a biography
by Gerald Clarke

I recently read local writer Milton Murayama’s All I asking for is my body. On the back cover was this quote from a reviewer:

'The irony is that it is fighting, war, and gambling that ultimately free the family and the two boys from the cultural, social, and economic bondage.'

Edward A. Shaw

This quote made me think about war as opportunity for breaking down or escaping entrenched societal structures, in this case, enslaving traditions and labor monopoly.

Finally, in the library, I saw a guy who reminded me of one of the angry, screaming men in the park last night. Unlikely that it was him, but I did a double take. The man in the library was sitting at a table reading a book, Power of Silence by Carlos Castaneda.

War, silence, and waiting around--hmm. That got me thinking. Yoga, psychotherapy, and Shintaido have helped me out of painful, entrenched patterns. (I'm a work in progress!) So have guitar lessons, a shift in what I eat, a first step toward a door, being open to gifts (like an invitation from a friend, or exit ramps to Tangerine Road and Walden Road, or an emailed photo of George Bush in a white lab coat) when they come my way. I guess the point is we don't have to be stuck...