On this lovely day, I walked to the mailbox, something I rarely do anymore, and along the way I picked a nosegay to put into the beautiful vase friends brought us fro Vancouver. The bayou is awash with clovers and yellow and purple wildflowers.
A missive from Japan:
This website below really encouraged me to look at bright side and stay positive. It is a message board for people who have seen “good” in this disaster in Japan.
I liked this one.
“On my four-hour walk home, a woman was standing out on the sidewalk holding up a sign that read “Please feel free to use our bathroom!” Japan is the most heartwarming country in the world. I just cried and cried.” @fujifumi
IT WILL BE OK
I have certain friends who are my go-to for things that I can’t work out myself work wise. The other day one of them gave me some good advice, which I took to heart and posted a sign in my office:
Loca’s problem is that she is high energy and smart. I was reminded of this when I was out walking her with a friend. My approach now is to engage her and wear her out. We are getting along much better.
The Federal Flood that ensued after Katrina is a reminder of men’s egos and greed. The tsunami of Sri Lanka, the floods of Pakistan, the earthquakes in China, the earthquake and tsunami now in Japan are reminders of who is in charge. Mario Botta erected the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and said where there was once nothing, we have erected this building. There had been something there.
Is it our folly to build permanent structures? Are we mad to seek constants in an unpredictable world? Is there any use in planning for a world that will most certainly change? I asked this to myself as I listened to a friend talk about the rift in her marriage and how to reconcile hate and love, action and nonaction, belief and disbelief. I asked it again this morning as I once again contemplate the horrendous events in Japan in light of my recent memories of Katrina.
A tree was planted in the backyard to give shade and pecans. A screen porch was designed around its shade. It came down before the porch was completed and then needed to be chopped and disposed of. The tree didn’t even have time to yield furniture, which might then have rotted in standing, shallow water from the next flood or be handed down to generations.
Stephen Mitchell quotes his old teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn commenting on verse 15 of the Tao:
Our mind is like a clear glass of water. If we put salt into the water, it becomes salt water; sugar, it becomes sugar water; shit, it becomes shit water. But originally the water is clear. No thinking, no mind. No mind, no problem.
My mom was always saying she was going to plant a garden, but it seemed life got in the way. This fact is sort of odd if you knew that my mother was raised on a farm where planting was such a natural rhythm of life that no one thought about it, they just did it. A friend of mine is wanting to get back into the cottage garden business again so I hired her to plant a butterfly garden in my front yard. She put the plants in yesterday. This morning before dawn, I opened the shutters to see the newly planted flowers all standing at attention, waiting to grow and to give me great joy over the coming months.
Then I came upstairs and saw that Japan’s nuclear reactor had another explosion and that 50 brave workers were still there trying to contain the damage but that this situation had grown from grave to catastrophic. News from a colleague says they are safe but concerned. I’m concerned too.
Yesterday, when I offered Osmocote to my friend she said she preferred to do the garden organically. And I said I do too, but all of the gardeners I had met used it, and she said, it forces the blooms rather than lets them occur naturally. Nuclear reactors – nuclear power – all sitting on a ring of fire island in the middle of the ocean – was this sound judgment? Was this long-term thinking?
We plant our gardens in the hope we will reap the harvest. My thoughts are on Japan this morning.
I am a horrible, terrible and amateur photographer, but it doesn’t stop me from taking photographs. Today as I was walking in the park I saw an elderly, handsome gentleman in a black suit and tie walking a white standard poodle and they looked like a couple. I wish I could have snapped that photograph.
When you become aware of the negative talk inside your head, it is truly amazing. I’ve been on this mission to kick the habit and so how I’m doing it is acting like the person who is talking in there is a good friend instead of me, and as any good friend does, I tell her, “Now come on, it’s not that bad, it’s okay.” My self talk ranges from criticizing myself for not doing everything on my mental and physical lists in a timely and organized manner to guilty feelings of pleasure that I took from seeing a tree’s new growth this morning in City Park when Japan is struggling to overcome such a disaster that is not yet over. Truly, do you think I could be a better friend to myself?
I listened to Ani Choying Drolma, a Buddhist nun, chanting and felt as if I could transcend this mind of mine if only through her voice. She says, “At the very beginning of my stay at the monastery, I was still very wild, with a lot of negativity in my heart, in my mind. I was always ready to protect myself. That means to be angry or to fight. But that slowly, slowly transformed.”