Staycation

Rich and I have often fantasized about trips in an RV. Last night we stayed over at our kids, who happen to live on a ranch with RV Park.
It was cozy:

and compact. The moon shone through the skylight. Spectacular sunset, and nice to see dawn.

Rich made me hot cereal, and actually drove the RV on I-25. I’m afraid I’m more decorative than useful in this situation.

Since we were close by, we headed to funky Madrid.

And enjoyed recycled art at Weasel & Fitz.

Home by lunch.

Have a safe and pleasant holiday.

Childhood of A Good Person: Poem by Miriam Sagan

old fruit tree
propped on a crutch
like a legless veteran

drunk
in a doorway

on the temple grounds
line of stone buddhas
expressions
weathered out

I try
to not just be
a tourist—-offer coins
in the box
but pass the beggar
anyway

I can’t tell
if I had the childhood
of a good person
or a less good one
but please
don’t trouble yourself
too much
after all
I’ve come this far
on my own
already.

Seen Recently on SFCC Campus

I always enjoy work by artist Fairley Barnes.

And here is my list of extreme things I’ve done or experienced–Miriam Sagan

Extremis

I have been in at least 3 earthquakes.

I have visited a locked ward, seen a baby born, been in the audience for a prison play, and seen three corpses right after death.

I have been to a mariachi mass, in a mikvah, and lived in a Zen monastery.

I have been in a mosque.

I have seen my cervix.

I have been to massage school where we worked naked.

I have been to neo-pagan rituals, Pueblo dances, and the Macy’s Day parade.

I have had my heart broken.

I have stayed at the Plaza Hotel in NYC.

I have been in a union.

I have solved a koan.

I have hallucinated a dead person.

I have shot a gun.

I have been in a rock band.

I have cooked tofu.

I have kept a secret for twenty years.

I have streaked naked at a swimming pool in the Yosemite Valley.

I have spent a week in a trailer in an abandoned air force base at the edge of a bombing range in Great Basin.

I have marched on Washington.

I have seen the northern lights, whales in the ocean, coyotes, wild flamingos, whooping cranes, snow geese, sandhill cranes, bears, glaciers, geysers, sunrise, sunset, meteor showers, Jesus Rays, sun dogs, eclipses of the sun and moon, the rings of Saturn through a telescope.

I have performed in public on the marimbas.

I have carried the torah.

I have caught a bluefish.

I have an enormous scar.

I have been hypnotized.

I have had a magpie pull a mitten out of my hand.

Apocalypse Every Five Seconds by Miriam Sagan

Apocalypse Every Five Seconds

I should get off Facebook, but I don’t. I click on articles about how the end of this or that or everything is coming. Economy. Food supply. Education. It’s over. And non-advice. Like—get ready.
I’m as prone to panic as the next person. But I’m not at all prone to the belief or experience that:

A. Everything in the U.S.A was once fine but
B. Now the apocalypse is coming.

I was raised with a historical view, by my Marxist father. Right this very minute my husband Rich is sitting on the couch reading a book about the internment camps for Japanese-Americans. One was located in Santa Fe, walking distance from this very house. The book is about non-Japanese Americans, often Quakers, who worked to help the internees. Good and evil behavior co-exist so closely in this—as in most—situations—that human nature is truly baffling.

We can’t see the future. I don’t like that at all, but it is true. Karl Marx couldn’t see the future—and neither can Sister Rosa Fortune Teller who is also walking distance from my house. Actually, Ursula Le Guin said NOT being able to see the future is what makes human life bearable. I’m going to buy into that. Pundits or philosophers who predict the future haven’t been to enough horse races, (which I enjoy at our state fair).

The random quality of the universe—which again, no one likes—accounts for some unpredictability. And so does the fact that we can’t always see where cause and effect is going, or even coming from—the chains may be too long for us to observe. Who sits at a nice wedding and can correctly predict if the happy couple will divorce? Who looks into the face of a baby and sees the baby’s fate? Who looked at collapse of the Soviet Union and saw Putin? Not me.

Fear of the future is not the best motivator to do something positive in the present. Disaster may strike, it may not, or something unimaginable may happen.

Here is what I know. People don’t survive alone, despite movies about canned goods stashes and zombies. My only advice to myself—or to you—is to keep relationships with others as cleaned up and positive as possible. To not neglect communities you are already part of. To build connection where you can. But I’d believe this if I was going to live to be a hundred and two in utopia.

Last Omer poem of the season! By Ya’el Chaikind

SAY YES

The last drop of light
hangs above the moon

illuminating the cusp
of revelation, that still

moment between day
and night where we stand

at the threshold of all
possibilities, where a choice

will lead us through the next
doorway, and with heads held

high and the wisdom that
it takes far more energy to

struggle than to lean into
our inner Yes, we leap,

letting the adventure
unfold us, again, and again.

Ya’el Chaikind
5.18.18

Omer Day 49:
Malchut Shebe Malchut
Majesty, Dignity, & Nobility within Majesty, Dignity, & Nobility

I’ve Been Following Some Contemporary Japanese Buddhist Art–And This Is My Favorite

http://www.skny.com/artists/mariko-mori