The Valley of Angels

With minds a tad clearer and hearts more in the pure mode, we made our way to my grandparents' home in Los Angeles. They've lived in the same house for nearly 50 years. Complete surbana today, and sometimes when I'm in this city I tend to feel like it is like one quite large strip mall that extends block after block after... and funny to think when my grandparents moved in here, there were dirt lots and orange orchards around. It was especially great to get to LA with a block of time in silence beforehand-- or as much silence as a loud and distractive mind allows!-- than the alternative of 2-3 road wary days. I also appreciated it because it helped me to move further from being on the receiving to the giving end of service. My grandparents have provided so much for me during my life, and over time I began to realize it was becoming more my own role to be so selfless. But it wasn't as easy as I would hope, so strong were the memories of the secret cookie container in the garage. :) It was nice to feel just a small bit closer to meeting an obligation to be there for them in a similar way... but still so, so much to learn. (As you can see from the top picture, my grandfather still loves his cigars!!!

So the time passed with conversations, movies, all kinds of ethnic foods, meeting up with friends and family, helping my grandmother with the exceedingly complex new telephone, and looking at old photos, such as this one of my mom and grandfather at left. We also spent some time taking a picture or two ourselves in present day, a past time immensely enjoyed by my grandmother, as you can see here...




It was also a pleasure, actually, to have so much time. LA can be a little overwhelming for me, but with more than a few days to spare, I was able to observe these elements more clearly and react to them less. Even it means I would still advise profound consideration if one is actually going to head to the stores after instead of before noon. It was nice to have more time to adjust to it, remember the point of my visit, and get the most out of it. When it was finally time to leave, I really could have stayed longer!

Here is one last photo-- of our traditional New Year meal, with the delicious challah in the center of the table...

A drive, a sit, some views...

We left Colorado and took three days to drive across Utah and Nevada. An unthinkable amount of time for many of my friends across Europe and Asia, but nothing too out of the ordinary in our vast land of meandering highways and road wary travelers. We topped over Monarch Pass in Colorado and were treated to some early leave changes. Leaving Colorado at this time, one misses the beautiful change from summer to fall. Visible in many subtle ways inner and outer, it is most startling and apparent in the leaves. I grew up in Northern California, which doesn't really have four distinct seasons, and here I was headed to SoCal, which has even less of such a cycle-- it seems to go from pleasantly cool to a tad hot. I didn't learn to appreciate the magic of a four season adventure until I went to Japan, and every day seems to celebrate and acknowledge what one is moving from and towards... and complete food, dress, holidays, activities, and other such things to go along with it!

Skirting the Vegas traffic in that strange oasis, and then driving through some of the desert and having to solve some unexpected problems of a flat tire and loose front windshield (!). The later happened at the Nevada/California border, in a kind of surreal play-town with no reality attached to it (by the parking lot of Whiskey Pete's). I went to a "fashion center" where small ice creams sold for $6 with the hopeless goal of finding some Painter's Tape to at least hold everything through those hot desert winds until we could find a windshield repair place (a compassionate eavesdropper helped us out by giving some all-purpose duct tape, which saved the day).

And then the scenery finally improved going up California past Fresno, the incredible agricultural center of the entire region, and just around Yosemite National Park, to the California Vipassana Center (CVC). We spent 3-4 days here, wondering how bad Hurricane Rita was going to hit the Texas coast, and purifying minds in the process. A nice stay and a wonderful prep for Los Angeles!

Here is a picture of the meditation hall at CVC...

Hit the Road, Jack

After some nice summer days it's back on the road. My mom and I will take a small trip to attend another meditation course-- this time she'll be serving and I'll be sitting.

We had an early frost this year, meaning that the garden gave notice to stop producing. But there was some good news in all this... it meant that the tomatoes weren't going to get any riper. Not only is this fortunate for those of us who don't like ripe tomatoes, but it also meant that we had scores of green totatoes we didn't know what to do with. So my mom spent a day pickling them, and if you've never had homemade pickled green tomatoes, you're missing out! It was a day long process but made more than a dozen jars. We also had some fried green tomatoes, but I think the recipe used might need a little refining...

I am about fully prepared now for my SIT Teacher Training course in Chicago in October, and I'm happy as well to check out the Illinois Vipassana Center before and after. I had wanted to do my second course in Bangkok, but I just found out that it won't start until March. So I might try an earlier one in Northampton or Costa Rica... on verra.

A powerful read

Looking for a good read in a boat, on a train, in a car, or in a plane? I recommend this one, whether you are a gent or a dame! Seriously, this is a powerful (and scary!) read about where the world has gone in the last four years, that is, W.'s aim...

(From New York Times Magazine, 9/11/05)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/11OSAMA.html

Also, these are two very interesting magazines that had come out recently...

The Believer and n+1

At the cabin

A few years back we built a cabin up in the Rocky Mountains, near the center of the state of Colorado. It's in a place that's barely even on the map. It's not really in a town, and there aren't really any road to go up to it... four wheel drive in the summer, snowmobiles in the winter, and in between, you're kind of out of luck. The nearest "town" is a ghost town named Bonanza, where quite some time ago there were many mines all around. Their remnants are still around, near the base where you start to head up the mountain... old mining facilities covered with sediment, broken down houses, old gravestones, and other signs.

The cabin is a beautifully built one room abode, with the fire in the cookstove providing both warmth and food, and the essential pot of tea. There's not much to do, and of course that's the point (even though some people like to rig radios and TV/VCRs to work, though I can't imagine why). The meditation sittings especially, you can feel the difference, feel where you are and the less distractions. Distractions like writting silly blog entries and photos :)

As for the time when nature calls, here are the facilities (toilets for you non-American), though with recent raids by packrats. So many kinds of wildlife up here-- and as you can see I got into trying to get some close-ups of insects. I like this because it allows you see how much detail nature provides even in the smallest and subtlest of features (or small and subtle to our big human eyes).

So the time was spent doing some reading-- doing LOTS of reading, and for me, doing a bit of work to get prepared for my Teacher Training course in Chicago. Writing longhand and then to work at the computer later, which actually I have been working solidly at this week as my family is away in Kansas City for more WWII Bombing Group reunions (similar why we went to Czech). Whew! So much computer in the last few days, especially compared to the week before at the cabin!

Some weeks in Colorado just as the weather is changing, and fall brings in a breathtaking array of colors all around. Then I might be in California for a short while before my (incredibly busy) TESOL course in downtown Chicago. Hopefully some sitting at both those places!!!

Workin'

I've spent the mornings working outside and the rest of the day dividing my time between a number of different activities-- though have not spent nearly enough time preparing for my upcoming Teacher Training course in Chicago! I've been helping my mom sift through what seems to be thousands of digital photos from our trip in Europe and finding a way to print these out-- can't really put a jpeg in an album.

Even though the property here is not overwhelming in terms of its size, it is quite varied as to what the landscape is. This, compounded with the fact that the record of the previous owners with maintaining the property is almost unimaginable, makes for constant mornings of work-- that is, barring sub-zero temperatures or mounds of snow. Which is far from the case now, as that hot Coloradan sun beats down on you through the thin air and high altitude. Even after quite a few dumpster runs over the years, we are still finding all sorts of trash in some corner of the property, or buried or half buried in the ground or weeds. A week ago we took out a great deal of barbed wire, chicken wire, and weeds to open up a hillside. It was a contstant series of pitchfork and wheelbarrow runs to the firepit for what could burn, and some serious wire cutters to try to manage throwing this tangled mess away.

Then I got it in my head that it would be quite nice to help out in providing a nice path to make walking up and down the hill easier. I realized that with our property being as varied as it is, you'd see a lot on a walk in the way of views, trees, brush, water, garden, house, etc. At Vipassana meditation centers there is always a walking path, and somehow just the mere existence of one gives way to a greater number of introspective strolls. Why not create one here? I had no idea how to go about it-- I wondered if laying gravel would be best. Eventually I began digging a kind of trench (just to make the 'physchological' component of on-the-path/off-the-path clearer), and then I got some large rocks, flagstones, and bricks, and dug them in. Boy was this a lesson in trial and error! How to dig it out, how to make them stay firm in the ground, how to have curves up hillsides... but a lot of fun! Fun to be providing a nice service to my family, and fun to learn so much about the task. I have definitely found through experience that no matter what one is engaged at, to approach it with an attitude of humility, the lesson can really be profound. How much I learned doing my task of cleaning toilets for ten days at the Swiss meditation center! Not to say that it's always easy to go from presenting some academic paper at a conference to sweeping the floors, but the benefits are always worthwhile.

Unfortunately in my work outside I've disturbed the homes of many beings. Once I uncovered some boards to find a whole family of snakes! (just one managed to stay when I went back for the camera-- the first sight was damn impressive) Additionally I've come across a bee hive and all kinds of groundhog holes and squirrels (and acorns buried deep), as well as a very large ant colony living in a rotted out log. These are my days for now... may be headed up to the cabin this week!

Funny stuff

I bought this lighter in Burma a couple years ago, and it had what looked to be quite an ordinary sticker on it with infintesely small writing. After a little while the "Announcements" note caught my eye and I managed to read it-- as amazing as even the wackiest stuff I saw while in Japan, which is saying something! I could never bring myself to part with the lighter for the comedy of the words, and decided to record it now in posterity...


Oh, and I just found out where the page is for my graduate school's internship photo contest. To see some neat travel photos (some by me :) check out this page!

Also, I put my photos up of my time in Poland (including Auchwitz and Krakow)...

And here is England and Switzerland....