A Treasure Found at Home

today is bike to work day and, as far as i can tell, i pass exactly zero energizing stations on my route to work.

that’s fine, really. to be honest, i had planned to bike to work today before i even remembered that it was going to be bike to work day. today i’m going to the office closer to home, instead of in the city. i’m not splitting my time between them, as i do some occasional days now, and … i just bought a new folding bike! not that i needed a folding bike to get to this office, but it does have a nice little holder rack on the back so i can take my lunch or something heavyisher without putting it in my messenger bag. (maybe i’m packing it wrong so that lunch ends up mushed, but thems the breaks.)

i’m just very grateful that as these gas prices have gotten higher and higher i’ve been able to take public transportation to my old office (and have a very nice walk by the bay every day) and that now that i’m in my new office i had a friend selling her folding bike, i’m close enough to ride easily ( < 3 mi ), and i still get to go by a body of water every day. plus, dude y’all, my legs are going to look really good!

yesterday i took lunch to my friends and their new beautiful baby girl. i can’t believe i forgot my camera in the car. but, really, my hands were full and i don’t think i would have wanted to set her down to get a photo.

she is, as most just born babies are, very wee. c is an expert swadler but rr is an expert escape artist. br tells me she just discovered her hands the other day. she seems to like them very much and was self comforting by sucking on the side of her left hand. none of the fingers actually stayed in her mouth on the few occasions that they made it in to begin with.

we talked about babies and relationships and love and what comforting movement and noises their little jewel prefers. her daddy even sang her a little song — i nearly melted right then and there.

after br and rr left for their meeting, i helped c measure for the handrails in the house (which is almost finished). then i drove down to the maker faire where i hung out with tut and dr. beth (and nomad and his date briefly). afterwards, we had dinner at this bizzare sushi restaurant in st. matt then i drove home and fell asleep on the couch watching tv i recorded earlier in the week. oops

being called “girly-head” by a curly haired four year old in a dress and pink shoes while giving her a piggy-back ride up a tall, steep hill on a dirt road

this song: http://rurl.org/pml

my cat looking at the drain when i reach to turn on the water in the tub (that’s where the water pools, it must come from that direction, too, no?)

big ‘ol trout swimming up against my ankles

watching momma mouse run with babies still attached (only because i knew they were actually safe)

watching previously mentioned four year old try to slide on nearly horizontal slide, set so low the end actually pointed up

availability of other work
office supplied bagels
garma’s back
good parking spot
noise in car not cause for huge concern
priase you video (fatboy slim)
youtube
videos on flickr
time to read
caramels !
new clothes
cuddly nighttime kitty
healthy babies all around

there’s an idea out there that men’s public bathrooms are messier and more gross than women’s. i’m not sure i buy it. i’ve seen women’s bathrooms at well-run venues which i’ve been afraid to step into.

anyhow, this isn’t about that bathroom, this is about our work bathroom. a couple weeks ago there was a furiously whispered conference in the hall upstairs between a couple women and our office manager (also a woman). moments later office manager sent an email to all the women in the office, marked private, reminding us to please clean up after ourselves after using the toilet — make sure the protective tissue paper and whatever else is in the bowl flushes.

i almost replied to all asking them to please try to dry up some of the lake of water they leave on the counter top, too, but then thought better of it. that sort of behaviour gets me labeled as “passive aggressive” although WHY anyone thinks directly asking for what you want is passive is beyond me. but, that’s another post.

anyhow, today when i went in there was already someone else in one of the stalls. i went into another and started attending to business when the other person shuffled her clothes, walked out of the stall and then out of the bathroom. and that was all. she didn’t FLUSH! she didn’t wash her hands. she just. walked. out.

now, having known someone who was paranoid of public places (who actively worried about how to get OUT of the bathroom without touching anything and thereby catching a fatal illness) i think i can imagine her thought process. you see, bathrooms are dirty. they have germs all over as evidenced by unflushed toilets and pools of water all over the counter around the sink. what those minds fail to grasp is that if everyone would just sit down and make sure the paper goes in the toilet and flush (with follow up flushes if necessary) and wash their hands and mop up their drips - then the bathroom wouldn’t be a filthy mess!

unrelatedly (or maybe not since it’s frequently left behind - used), i’d like to see the data on how many germs that tissue paper actually blocks.

breath held
in
an.tic.ipation
(any second now)
wait

then
engines fire
bolts explode
rockets (bodies) shake and

breathe
quiet
peace
stillness

five twenty in the morning
eyes open
ears open to the crash bash drive of trucks
in the fruit-packing district

mind still in the dream
the bad dream
the leaving me dream
the not caring dream
the stupid, what was i thinking dream
why even dream such a thing

next those girls come waltzing in
the screaming girls
the wall-building girls
the name calling girls
the speak another language girls
why did i try for so long

i kick them all out

in their place come taxes
the more than i though taxes
the didn’t plan right taxes
the have no money taxes
the grow up quick, here i am taxes
how did i screw up so badly

one thirty six in the afternoon
eyes open
ears open to the mumble whirr of the office
under the bridge

mind still in the dream

i’m in a bad mood today. i got my tax stuff from my tax dude, and boy, do i owe some taxes! the real problem is that i mis-estimated the amount i should be setting aside from each check. which means, i’ll have to get a loan. plus, my property tax is higher than estimated, too. soooo. i’ll have to be paying on the “surprise tax” loan, setting aside more money from each check to prevent future surprises of the same ilk, and raise my mortgage payment each month to be sure i’m not surprised by property taxes either.

all of which is to say, if you don’t see much of me in the coming… oh, year or so… it’s cause i can’t afford to leave the house.

i had a bad dream last night, too. unrelated to taxes, but very much related to dating. so i woke up frustrated with myself for making poor dream choices, and then remembered i made some poor financial choices irl. as a result, i’m feeling rather barfy and unhappy today. fair warning.

a flame moves through
my city

everybody notices a fire

fire warms you
fire destroys
fire creates space for something new

after the quake the city burned
a different flame passed through the streets today
a flame of hope, brotherhood, and perseverance

maybe it was not so different after all

dropped the ball
on the writing
because i’m grumpy
i want that look again
i want it to stay
but i’m linus laraby
i’m captain reynolds
i’m temperance
and that’s a one third chance at best

my community is having a conversation about spending time alone, which was suggested as a conversation about not being in a relationship but has quickly moved to something much easier to talk about.

one woman wrote the following as part of her response:

Americans are “low” context, we say what we mean explicitly, we avoid subtley, and am uncomfortable with silence in group settings. “high” context cultures, for example the Japanese, it is not so much *what* is said but *how* it is said, things do not have to be said outloud to be understood, and maintaining a good relationship is valued above speaking what is meant.

this is exactly how i feel here in california, except replace ‘American’ with ‘Texan’ and ‘Japanese’ with ‘Californian’. and skip that part about any of it being understood. i hear people complain about someone in particular, how frustrated and upset they are, but if that person walks in the room they’re full of hugs and “so good to see you”s.

i’m still trying to get my head around it.

the thing that gets me most about this interview is the reporters astonishment that one of the protesters is a woman. duh.

the torch comes to sf on wednesday. these students are protesting that event in an attempt to bring awareness to the situation in tibet. the torch is, as far as i know, supposed to come right past my building. wednesday is going to be an interesting day.

another interview with the same guy is here. this reporter seems to have better questions. when he talks about chinese propaganda, she says, “so now you’re using the golden gate bridge for yours.” and calls him on the risk and inconvenience to the people around him. he had pretty good responses for the most part.

we were standing in the back of the tibetan goods store looking at rugs and heard a kid out on the sidewalk look in the door and say, rather loudly, “isn’t that one of those gondolas they blow in for yodeling?”

we both laughed out loud.

since i forgot yesterday’s poem, here are two.

Back

proving how he’s changed
she said
He opens his mail now
and i laughed
but i know
i’ve done that, too

Taxes

the day gets closer
just as
the days will continue on after

i will pay what i can
the world will not end

i’ll just eat a lot more rice

reading some of my usual blogs today i came across a post detailing this wish to raise money for a woman who has just been diagnosed with cancer for the THIRD TIME!

holy crap!

first, it’s not just a please give sort of situation. each time you donate you get a ticket for the raffle. so, donate $5 twice, you get two tickets and lisa gets $10 closer to taking her kids to disney before she begins treatment… again.

come on, guys. even if you just give $5 it’s helpy.

one fifty in the morning
lying eyes shut
on this side
on that side
on my back

i give up trying
and am thankful for my dvr

at two twenty three in the morning

as a word of warning, i’m composing this at the computer after a drink after not very much food.

my cat
my treasure
waiting at home

full of meows
demands for attention
a gift
a reminder
to practice patience

full of love and cuddles
demands to slow down
a gift
a reminder
to be in the present moment

full of fur
shedding
a gift
a reminder
to clean the house

who needs a tea boy when i have a cat?

i upgraded my wp to 2.whatever-it-is and decided it was about time i made some other changes, too. so, i finally switched themes. i really loved the old one, but i was clearly never going to clean it up and make it mine. i also turned off the need to register to make comments. i have spam karma running and that does seem to catch most of the spam. we’ll see how it goes.

the weekend was lots of fun. i took my camera along but never pulled it out. one picture i did not take was acrobat and peanut sitting in the big orange chair reading in front of the fire. from the back all you could see over the top of the chair was acrobat’s head and peanut’s two little puffy pigtails.

saturday was an all day meeting of my shambhala buddhism class. i haven’t written about it yet because i’m honestly not really sure what to say.

we met at drala’s house since the center was busy with a weekend retreat. we shared breakfast an played with the new puppy, kiki.

we went into the other room to meditate. drala had set out a low support cushion for kiki to sit on. i was doubtful, but she plopped right down on it after going to the other room for a chew toy. she was sitting quietly, gnawing away, when the smoke from the incense floated into the stream of sunlight pouring in the window just in front of her. her ears went up and she backed into me pretty quickly. i tried to comfort her a little by putting my hand on her back, but she was really curious about the smoke and more than a little nervous. she crept up to inspect but, being smoke, there was nothing solid to inspect. she ran back to drala and started barking and growling. drala put the incense out and kiki laid down next to him and went to sleep. she slept the whole rest of the hour and a half we meditated, raising her head only when we would switch from sitting to walking to sitting.

for lunch, we went to a great little indian place in the tenderloin. it was delicious, and conveniently located for the second part of our day. after lunch we walked slowly, in silence, around the tenderloin keeping particular slogans in mind. we practiced tonglen, we joined everything with meditation, and i noticed what a different experience it was from when i lived there.

granted, i lived on the edge and would not walk alone through the areas we walked through saturday but the difference was profound. i felt much more separate from the people on the street than i remember feeling when i lived there. not that i ever felt a strong kinship with the men offering me money for sex, but at least they were acknowledging me. i had the feeling that our slow walking and silence created a bubble around us. that they knew we were there to see their pain somehow, and they were ignoring us. (except for that one woman who asked a for a pipe.)

afterwards we drove to crissy field, which was also crowded but with a very different type of energy. we looked at a display of eggs for birds and sharks and other fish in the area, we got coffee, and sat on the seawall and watched a golden retriever do his thing with a tennis ball his owner threw repeatedly into the bay.

i still feel a bit off about the visit to the tenderloin, though. i sort of wish we had done something to interact with the people we were trying to be so open to - gone to glide and served lunch or something. as it was, i feel a little like we were taking advantage of their misfortune to move ourselves just a smidgen further on our spiritual path. drala asked if i though we were hurting them at all. no, it’s not so much that, but that by saying we were being open but by standing by and observing only we weren’t helping when we had a chance to.

i’m coming to understand that i don’t believe in impartial observance when it comes to human interaction. i’m reminded of this quote from desmond tutu:

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
-Desmond Tutu, clergyman (b. 1931)