Time to move

We've lived in South Berkeley since October 2018. I've never liked this neighborhood and, in particular, our street (Harmon between Sacramento and California). Yesterday we found our tires slashed as retaliation for making a noise complaint the previous evening. Fuck this. Anyone have a place they want to rent to us?

Copyright Maya Blum Photography, 2020

Better late than never

It took 12 years, but I finally got past the fact that a now-ex friend hit on Adam, telling him I'd totally fuck you in the guise of writing to the so-called real Adam Sandler. I just re-read the email and it did absolutely nothing to me. I went through so much pain when she first sent that to him. Looks like my confidence is a lot stronger ... as I would have hoped.

Rock and roll.

Today's writing

I didn’t just want to return to California. I ached for it the way that we ache for any solid addiction. I palmed my yearning, hiding it, but barely. Anyone within six feet of me knew.

The day I was offered the job, the copy machine threw its toner. I found out the way I was presented with all official bulletins: Cecily emailed me while basically staring at me through her glass wall of windows. God, I hated the bitch. I didn’t understand that this was boss and employee, office and workers, the fucked-up game of Russian nesting dolls that is the modern professional environment.

Also

Sometimes you write something and delete the shit out of it. You nuke that motherfucker. You scorch it off not just the face of the earth, but the universe as a whole. Those words belong neither here nor there.

Small victories before dawn

Knocked out some copy for a client. We'll see what he thinks. I'm enjoying it because he's a photographer and I like working with fellow artists. His stuff is good, too.

Also, broke off the tip of my charger in my phone. Tweezers fixed that shit. I rule.

Conquering the Writing Blues

Have you checked out the podcasts here? Some good stuff. Of course, I'm prejudiced. Check out my friends, too!

Dorky lyrics, serious meaning

If you could read my mind love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
About a ghost from the wishing well

- Gordon Lightfoot

Best dharma talk I've heard in a long time

Frank Ostaseski is the man.

It's been two and a half months ...

I've missed working in cafes terribly. When I found that Journey Coffee in Fairfield -- my ancient stomping grounds -- was open for business, I threw down the top and booked it up here. So awesome to sit here like things are somewhat normal!

.., though who am I kidding? When someone seems less than six feet from me, I want to clock them!

My Quiet Lightning reading

Back on Marketplace

The story is here!

A drive at sunset

Gil Fronsdal on non-constancy

In and of itself, love, kindness, care is part of the flow, river, of our experience. As soon as we cling ... as soon as we hold it fixed, it's no longer love or care. That to trust deeply the flow of life and to learn how to navigate on the river of life so we're flowing along is what allows the deepest kinds of love and care to exist in us. That takes a lot of trust to settle back, relax, open. But to allow your care, your love, the natural capacity for kindness to flow out of your hope and experience, to flow out of your willingness to not resist or hold onto anything, a tenderness -- some people call it a vulnerability -- that allows our care, our empathy.

Taking time for myself

Ever since the pandemic started, I've been getting up stupid early. We're talking getting the coffee on at 2 in the morning. This morning was no different. As I sat here in my easy chair, Baz wandered over with his teddy bear and climbed on me.

Cute? Yes. But this is the time I get for myself. So after cuddles, he was summarily sent back to sleep. Selfish? Yes, but in a positive, necessary way. I feel no regrets.

Gil Fronsdal on cessation

Endings that are the end of being lost can be a relief. Endings that end misunderstandings can be enlightening. Endings that begin the path to freedom can be a refuge. Endings that end suffering are liberating. These are all endings that characterize dharma practice. Learning to recognize these endings can engender tremendous faith in the practice. 

So much energy

I'm up and totally -- not wired, just energetic. But what do I do with it? In the normal life I'd seek out an early-morning cafe, San Francisco, Pleasant Hill, whatever would do. Now my Lucy-car is gone (even though I can't complain; we have Gertie the convertible to step in) and you can't hang out in cafes any more. What next? Is the sky going to turn green?

Don't try it, sky.

School days

What I miss

Cafes
Travel opportunities
Days when Baz is in school and Adam is at work and it's quiet.

God damn I know there's more, but that's a start. And for the record: I fucking hate wearing masks.

Recent writing

Leaving the scene of sacrifice, I could feel my chest loosen. At least Max wasn’t like that. He’d never thrown himself at someone’s feet, never sobbed until his chest heaved with effort. I sometimes wondered if all the saved-up emotion was going to come back to bite me in the ass. Maybe he’d be 14 and a total drama queen. Well, I had 10 years to worry about that one.

Hey said a voice behind me. It sounded raspy, as if its owner had done his share of screaming or crying or both in recent minutes. I could testify that that wasn’t the case. He’d barely said a word while Eve was having her conniption. He’d stood there and borne witness, and I couldn’t figure out whether I considered that the best or most frustrating tactic.

I turned and faced him. In the coming months we would realize just how precious this type of connection is, just how tenuous and worthy of appreciation not merely in the moment, but for the future. The placement of a few breaths away from another, the privilege of regarding each other without the blockages of masks, our need for personal protective equipment writ large.

Jennifer Finney Boylan, "Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs"

In the years since then, I have come to understand that this is exactly what happens: you get used to a certain way of being in the world and then it changes. The people you love move away, or die, or something else happens -- sometimes you just fall out of the habit of friendship, and the friend who you once saw almost every day becomes someone you track distantly -- through Facebook, or Christmas cards, or not at all. I've had children of my own who've grown and moved away, and now I understand that feeling those pangs of distance and change is far more normal than any reliable routine. But in November 1979, this was all new territory. Sometimes the passage of time feels terribly personal, as if mortality is something they came up with just to hurt your feelings.

Random memory

Boston, 2009. Adam and I are walking through Copley Square and it's just JAMMED with security guards. We asked one of them what was up and he said: "It's a Jonas Bruddas cahncert."

An hour later, my father-in-law shook his head. "You idiots," he said.

Turns out Obama was in town for Kennedy's funeral. Who knew?

I see you!

Maizie: one of my two easiest births

Nadia Bolz-Weber on current world conditions

So the “Stockdale Paradox” is the ability to hold two opposing but equally true things at once:

You must have faith that you will prevail in the end

And at the same time you must confront the brutal facts of your current reality.

When I stop and check in with myself I must say - I believe we will prevail. As shitty as this all is, I have faith in the power of human love and creativity and resilience and kindness and humor. And I believe God to be the source of our love and creativity and resilience and kindness and humor, which means there is an eternal supply on which to draw when we just don't have what it takes. 

Also, I have faith that God is already present in the future we keep pinning our hopes and fears to so maybe it’s safe to let them go. 

Mother's Day

James Baraz on connection with others

Forgiveness works both ways. Sometimes we do something that hurts others that we later regret. Other times we’re on the receiving end of others’ hurtful words or actions. Until we’re able to come to some resolution about either of these, we spend lots of energy either in guilt or anger. Forgiveness is what frees up that energy and allows our hearts to open to life and greater well-being. When we’ve been humbled by our own unskillful actions and need to ask forgiveness, our own humanness can be a springboard toward forgiving others. Here are some forgiveness practices that I would encourage you to try with anyone you would like to resolve an unresolved conflict. 

A note of caution: You might not be ready to forgive a deep hurt or trauma. Don’t judge this or try to go anywhere you’re not ready to go. Forgiveness has its own timetable. If you can’t yet forgive another and you wish you could forgive, that’s a start. Feel the wholesome intention in that. And forgive yourself for just being where you are right now.

Frank Ostaseski on challenge

I'm curious about turning away from. I'm always interested in the obstacles, because they're the gateways for me, the obstacles. When you turn toward the obstacle, you understand it, you see through it, then the radiance of our being is ready and waiting for us. It was just obscured. ...

If we just can discover what's true right now, not the big truth, the big truth reveals itself. That's a lot of our work here. 

My first Mother's Day: 2016

Blogging 101: Publish Your Passion

I'm teaching my first-ever blogging survey for the Writing Salon! Very excited ... and need to get on the syllabus!

Queensryche, "Silent Lucidity"

Goodbye, Lucy

Today's writing

Power. Some have it, some don’t. Some wield it, others can’t. It’s what zaps around the world. I wanted to tell Paul about that, to open to him the way you do after sex or even a good laugh session, when you’re relaxed and soft and you just need to share. Instead I watched that little bit of say-so transfer from him to another, felt him lose that little part of his daughter, just the way I’d lost a bit of Max those years ago when I first offered him up to Carol Vulture. Sweet sacrifice, parenthood. Place them on the pyre, then walk away.

Conquering the Writing Blues

I'm featured today in the Conquering the Writing Blues summit!

Gil Fronsdal on turning toward suffering

We suffer without all the extra. We don't suffer more, but we suffer without all the ways that we have. ... We might be able to take suffering as kind of a broad umbrella term, a term that encompasses within it many kind of component parts, or different aspects of this particular aspect of human experience, suffering ... and the different translations give us different perspectives on it. ...

If you go back to the Buddha's teachings, he didn't have just one explanation. ... The ones that usually are taught is the Four Noble truths of the Buddha.

Dukha is an adjective, not a noun ... maybe the core meaning is pain, or painfulness, and then that pain is almost like a metaphor for all the kinds of sufferings human beings can have ... it's a big ouch. 

Virtual Quiet Lightning

It was so great to see my fellow writers, even just over the Brady-Bunch bullshit of Zoom. I got pissed off at Adam because I felt that he wasn't watching Baz the way I would, so I wound up decamping from the living room to another room where I could close and lock the door in order to do my reading.

I'm looking forward to in-person readings again. Someday, right? Someday.

Return to Innocence

This song reminds me of the first guy I ever loved. Don't exactly know why, but maybe I do.

Gil Fronsdal on COVID-19 as the era of care

The mutuality of care and practice in Buddhism ... the potential, the possibility that this becomes the era of care and that we are part of the caring generation that is remembered and celebrated for generations to come. It's that important what's happening now.

Virtual Quiet Lightning

I'll be reading tonight! Check it out and join us!

Just written to Pennie

Teaching online from home is an odd one. I can do it and it works okay, but the dynamic is off. This will be the first class I've taught entirely online without ever having met the participants in person. I think it'll be okay, though. I love teaching voice. It's such a sticky wicket of a subject and people have a hard time getting their hands around it. What they don't realize (sometimes don't, at least) is that it's as much of an issue of going inward as going outward to look at other influences. Voice really relies on getting to know oneself, how one thinks and conceives of life, and the unique story these things carry. I truly believe that, and I feel that it's my job as a teacher to almost midwife this out of them. So I'm getting ready to do just that.

Homeschooling

Prune

For the past 10 years I’ve been staring wide-eyed and with alarm as the sweet, gentle citizen restaurant transformed into a kind of unruly colossal beast. The food world got stranger and weirder to me right while I was deep in it. The “waiter” became the “server,” the “restaurant business” became the “hospitality industry,” what used to be the “customer” became the “guest,” what was once your “personality” became your “brand,” the small acts of kindness and the way you always used to have of sharing your talents and looking out for others became things to “monetize.”

A tale of restaurants, of the East Village, of change.

"She's giving me kisses"

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