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Archive for June, 2007

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The best thing about getting old…

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

What I like best about getting old is the clarity that comes from watching the roller coasters soar and sink for so many years that, while I never lose interest in what will happen next, I am also less likely to expect that whatever is happening now will go on happening. Buddhists call it impermanence. The breath arises and falls away, and that becomes a metaphor…. I’ve received a wealth of emails from old friends over the last few days, and I sit here with my arms outstretched, as if I could embrace us all. [read on]

4,3,2,1: LIFT OFF!

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

Manko and Kendra are spending their first night in their new home tonight. They took what they absolutely needed with them today. Tomorrow morning the moving men come, to load up what has been my household and take it over to their place. I’ll supervise the move and delivery while the girls are at work. The Grand Scheme is in motion. Is this really happening? I feel a little like I’m in the middle of that Dali painting with the melting clocks. [read on]

Vanessa Regrave, Heroine worship

Monday, June 4th, 2007

Last night CBS News Sixty Minutes featured an interview with Vanessa Redgrave, and although I was infuriated by Mike Wallace’s conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism during the interview, I was enchanted (as always) by Redgrave. She’s eight years older than I am, and all my life she’s been the woman I wanted to grow up to become. (That is, when I wasn’t wanting to grow up to be Pema Chodron, Barbara Jordan, Mary Oliver, or Audre Lorde: I have been blessed with glorious role-models!) Well, that won’t happen, but we’ve lived by the same ideals. I’m so glad she has been in the world at the same time I was. I could go off on the anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism thing, but I won’t. I relish the way she presents herself in the world, and I also clicked on the photo-essay and sat back and enjoyed every single photograph.

Energy, Zulu traditional doctors, Kirby vacuums

Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

Today is my second full day of not-teaching (till mid-August), and I feel as though I’m on intravenous Life Force. I went for a walk this morning, and I could feel energy surging through me like electric voltage. I think it’s related to a concept I learned from Zulu traditional doctors, about which I’ll say more beneath the line. Meanwhile, as I was finishing off my course, Manko and Kendra started training for a new job. At first they thought they were training to be telephone consumer service reps, and later they realized they were training to be Kirby vacuum cleaner salespeople. [read on]

Anybody want a tripod?

Friday, June 1st, 2007

I finished grading my students’ final exams, turned in their grades on the computer, stood up, and went numb, blank, and slightly crazy. I am now free till August 20, and in that time Manko will move to her first apartment, I will move to what feels like my first apartment (first time in years I didn’t have a kid or two with me), and then I’ll take Basho to a kennel and set out on my next pilgrimage, to see how these Zen centers feel and whether one of them is a good fit for my next longer-term home. I feel spacey, disoriented, and all at loose ends; I’m excited, unfocused, and hopeful, and if I were a cartoon I’d draw big dark circles around my wide-open eyes and a wiggly line for a mouth, with little wavy lines and small circles rising up over my head. [read on]