Latest "View from the Porch" 10-20-09

I grew up in Kansas City, in the heart of the Great Plains. Unless there was a front moving through, we had the same weather that people hundreds of miles in any direction were having. Not so Boulder or the rest of the front range! On any given day, (south to north) Colorado Springs, Denver, Idaho Springs, Boulder and Fort Collins may all be experiencing different weather (hot here/cold there; clear blue sky here/cloudy and snowing there.) My favorite thing, as an original flatlander, is to step out on my porch and see the line on the hillsides above which it is snowing and below which there is rain. This is exactly what is happening in this most recent "view from the porch." Snow up the hillside. Rain on my neighborhood.

Cherries!

There is a pie-cherry tree down the street just like the ones my grandmother used to have in her yard. It is a good year, meaning the cherry blossoms didn't get snowed on and since the tree is across the street from a hive of bees tucked down into the center of 140 year old Cottonwood trees, there were ample bees to pollinate the flowers. Now the cherries are starting to get ripe.

The cherries ripening always makes me remember the time my grandmother took me home with her on the bus. Luckily there was another little girl my age on the bus and we played happily on the twin seats as her mother and my grandmother sat behind us. She got off the bus about sunset and I promptly told my grandmother I was ready to go home now. I was shocked when she told me we were hundreds of miles away from home by now. I had been on long rides in the car before with my mother but when it was time to go home we could always just turn around and go there within minutes. That we had been driving steadily AWAY all this time shocked me!

My grandmother tried to comfort me as I cried. "Don't you want to see the cherries in the back yard?" she said, trying to coax me into cheerfulness.

I was up before dawn, out the back door, took a quick look at the cheeries and went back upstairs to wake up grandma and tell her I had seen the cherries, now I wanted to go home. I was a sad little pumpkin when I finally realized I was stuck at Grandma's house for a full week.

But she did let me eat all the cherries I wanted! And being spoiled rotten for a week was not a bad experience either!

It wasn't until I moved to this neighborhood that I realized that when the cherries ripen it is the anniversary of my week with my grandmother as a five-year-old!

Summer: The Little Boys Are At War Again!

I don't know what program this is but every year groups of little boys go to war in the pocket park across from my house. It is evidently a Boulder summer program because each group comes with teacher in tow. They troop down the sidewalk draped in capes and sometimes helmets, armed with nerf swords and bravado.

Clearly they are having a good time and there isn't a one with attention deficit disorder when it comes to sword fighting! They are all utterly focused and alive. Their shouts ring through the neighborhood.

I do sometimes wonder what their parents are thinking having their boys spend the summer practicing ancient arts of warfare and killing. But clearly the boys like it!

Tim Goes On A Diet

I promise the next time I write in this blog it won't be about Tim but I have to put in this one.

I took Tim to the vet in April. As I suspected he is overweight to the tune of about 2 pounds. The vet said I should cut back on his food. Actually, what the vet said was to mix in some canned pumpkin into his food, and Tim ate it too! Tim will eat just about anything I put in front of him. But the pumpkin didn't agree with him. So I have been trying to just cut back on feeding him so much. He gets a good serving of wet cat food at 6 am, and usually (now) a very small snack at noon, and then the other half of his wet food ration at 5:00 pm. I am beginning to wonder if Tim actually knows how to read clocks because at 5 pm on the button he is always right at my elbow. It was pretty awful the first few days but I thought we were beginning to come to terms with the kitchen door being closed once in awhile. The begging and the horror of an empty bowl was beginning to dim... but then, what should I find on my front porch today but this:


Now Tim wears bells. Two of them. And an ID tag that rattles against the bells when he walks. It has been over a year since Tim "hunted" anything. And I am afraid he may have gotten one of my "friends" today because there are a few squirrels that come to the porch for almonds. But I have to wonder... could it be that Tim decided to do something about his hunger? He brought the squirrel right up onto the porch and left it at the front door. He didn't try to eat any of it but... could it have been a message?

Look at this face and you tell me what you think!

Forget-Me-Nots

The air is sweet with the smell of damp earth and blooming flowers right now. It is a quintessential pleasure sitting outdoors in the evening in the comfortable chair under the tree in the front garden. I am, of course, bothered by the weeding I have not done and the leaves I have not raked.... but over all there are more important things.

I was working late at my computer last night when some quality of the light outside my windows caught my attention. Everything was suffused with an apricot glow. The alpine light was reflecting down from the clouds upon the earth. I didn't even grab my camera, I just ran for the front door. These moments are all too brief as the sun sets, and sets, and sets quickly.

I wait each year for the week when the Forget-Me-Nots bloom. Those tiny blue flowers tug at my heart!

Ever-Changing Views from the Porch

About a month ago
a few days later

about a week ago at dawn


a day later

today!

xxx

Happy Easter!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Adorable Tim

Make a Smilebox slideshow

A few pictures of my constant companion and friend.

Mysterious Images

The "Eyes" in the Water Glass

Taken at Sushi Tora

Here is one of those lovely mysterious things! I treated myself to dinner the other night at Sushi Tora. (I love sushi!) The base of the soy sauce bottle was just captured in the fluting of the water glass such that when I glanced down I was startled to see "eyes" looking back at me. They even seem to be moist eyes with a twinkle! I was glad I had my camera!

Night Rain in Boulder

Night Rain In Boulder

Taken from the top of the parking garage looking down on
The Boulder Bookstore and the street.

Friday, April 3, 2009 - ~8:30 pm

Snow at last!

The world is growing more and more white as the morning continues and my heart sings. We needed the moisture but deeper than that my soul relishes snow!


Here is Adorable Tim's response to the early morning cold. He faithfully gets up with me when I get up early to meditate... but his meditation is to become a "perfect zen circle of a cat!" How he tucks up so tightly I will never know!

I wrote a poem once when I was quite young that I am remembering this morning. It is about how much I love winter:

The last of winter's children

Dances on the sand

In her father's tattered clothing

Dancing with the wind

Spring is coming

I haven't written for awhile. My life has been full of new things and old ones. I am still getting used to attending a Christian Church after all these years of considering myself a Buddhist. But I have been missing 'community' and at this church, I have found welcome, tolerance for my Buddhist leanings, friendly people, ritual, music, and movie night! I watch through different eyes than I had as a child as a congregation walks through its religious life. I am looking for gold nuggets I may have overlooked in the past.

In two days I also begin a 100 day virtual Soto Zen Buddhist meditation retreat for which I have been preparing for the past two weeks - starting to sit again, getting the schedule of my life in order, starting to eat more simply and organically, buying a webcam and signing up for Skype. "WHAT?" I hear you say. "Part of getting ready for a meditation retreat involves setting up video calling?"

Yes, what a surprise! But this is how the meditation master I am going to be working with (who lives in Minnesota, and I live in Colorado) works with his students in personal meetings. Very interesting! I have my first fact-to-fact meeting on Saturday!

Lastly, it has been hard for me to be very productive in my business of late. Grief about the losses I experienced in 2008 has finally started arising to the surface but... it is good... and it is time. I just need to work with it.

It seems early... but the little flowers have started to bloom!

The Seasons Are Changing

Look here! Although it is still February, we are days away from some of the spring flowers starting to open. (In a way this is scary... it is warmer than it "should be" for this time of year.)

At the creek, the rocks are rimmed with crystals of ice.

I have found a place on Boulder Creek where I can start doing meditation every day. I have picked a beautiful spot with a large flat rock, sloping downward at the right angle and in the right direction, upon which to sit and a wonderful cascade of water in front of me. I have been accepted into a 100 day "virtual" meditation retreat under the supervision of a Soto Zen Meditation Master. This will be good! And I suspect it is going to help me focus and move forward in other parts of my life as well.

Ping Pong in the Night

Not as sulky as he looks - Tim the Cat doesn't like the flash on the camera.

I was in bed reading last night when I suddenly heard a dashing and rumbling plus a click, click, clicketty, clicketty, click, click, click. Tim the Cat was playing with one of his ping pong balls. I kept thinking that any minute he would get it stuck under some piece of furniture and the noise would be over but it kept going on and on. I finally realized he had somehow gotten a ping pong ball up, over, and INTO the bathtub.

I try to be considerate of my downstairs neighbor and I am sure a roudy game of ping pong ball, played by a thundering cat, in the bathtub, at 11 pm, is bound to be audible to someone trying to sleep downstairs so finally I got up and took the ping pong ball away from Tim. You should have seen his face peering over the rim of the tub. He looked both cute and forlorn at the same time.

I probably shouldn't talk about my cat so much, but I have to admit that he is one of my chief forms of live entertainment.

Stray Cat at Dawn

At 6:30 I was near my front door putting my shoes on when I heard an ever-so-gentle tap-tap on my front door. My hands stopped their movement of tying shoes. I thought "What in the world?" and was immediately conflicted about opening the door. Was it my downstairs neighbor for some reason? Was it someone bad who would hurt me? The soft tap-tap sounded again.

Gingerly, I opened the front door a crack and there, hanging on the screen, was a small cat. It had reached through the place on the edge of the screen that was loose and was gently pawing the curtain of clear red plastic hearts currently hanging on the door. The curtain of hearts was still gently swinging. The cat froze in place. I froze in place. And then the cat yanked its paw back through the screen, disengaged its claws, dropped to the porch and streaked off.

I stepped out onto the door mat. The cat halted at the top of the lower staircase and turned. It was so cold out, predawn, cold breeze in the darkness. I felt sorry for this cat out in the cold. "Kitty, Kitty, Kitty?" I called, wondering what in the world I would do if it came. It didn't. It delicately walked through the snow and sprayed my little pine tree and then returned to take one more good look at me from the top of the stairs before descending to the sidewalk and disappearing around the curve.

I went back into the house and shut the door. I looked down at Tim the cat, sitting in the center of the living room rug, remembering the time when he was a stray cat, so terribly skinny, and lost out in the cold. "Aren't you a lucky cat," I told him. "Is there a possibility of more breakfast?" he asked with his eyes.

As I drove out of the parking lot of the church later after meditation, two homeless men were standing behind the church in the lea out of the wind. I raised my hand to them as I passed and they raised their hands to me. One of them had his hands wrapped around a steaming paper cup of coffee.

Another of the long-time shops on Pearl Street had "Going Out Of Business" signs in its windows this morning.

Its cold in the world right now. Really cold. In the early morning, unexpected tapping on the door sounds like danger arriving at my house. I wish the recession would stay a story on television rather than standing as a "going out of business" sign in the windows of yet another familiar, neighborhood shop.

Smilebox Picture Show

Here are a few pictures I sent to my adopted neices and nephews of meditation in the morning, my weekend up in the mountains at the women's retreat, the Prayer Box I made at the retreat, and, of course Tim the Cat and his thoughts about my being gone a whole weekend!

Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Up in the Mountains Over the Weekend

I spent the weekend at First Congregation's annual women's retreat at the St. Malo conference Center in Allenspark, CO. It is just 10-15 minutes south of Rocky Mountain National Park. Ever since I first saw it I have loved the 'Chapel On The Rock' which graces the entrance to the center and which I could see, bathed in morning light, from the balcony of my room. What a magestic view!

Tim the Cat had to stay at home but he was well looked after by my twin neighbor girls across the street. They obviously spent some time playing with him (for which I am very grateful!) because his basket of ping pong balls and stuffed mice was pulled out into the center of the rug and there were balls and mice everywhere when I got home.

It is good to go on retreat now and again. I hadn't spent time laughing, crying, dancing, sharing and reflecting with other women for a long time and it was good!

Reaching one of my 100 goals in life!

When I was little my parents used to put my sister and I to bed before we were sleepy. What to do? I used to make up stories in the darkness to amuse myself. I thought, "When I grow up I am going to be a writer! I am going to publish books!" but when I shared this thought with my parents they strongly discouraged me from attempting to make my living in such a precarious way. So I became an English teacher instead... which lasted for all of one year... and now here I am a business skills trainer for small business owners. How did THAT happen?

Just today, though, I realized I made it. I DID become a published writer after all, even if I am self published and only my friends have found me (so far!) on the internet. I can't tell you how much pleasure I get from seeing these posts illustrated with photographs I have taken (mostly.)

I have often commented that I have waited for lifetimes for this generation where the tools of writing and publishing are positively at our fingertips! I am a very happy camper indeed!

World's Dirtiest Cat!

Timothy Ming, my good friend and companion, commented this morning, "I was never the one that thought being the cleanest cat in the world was a virtue. Remember that you were the one that wrote that title into the blog. I said, even that day, that I would take a dust bath as soon as I had the opportunity. You know I did!"

Good as his word, Tim the Cat DID have a dust bath yesterday... a fine day of brilliant Colorado sun and balmy temperatures. He came into the house absolutely brown on gray and I bribed him back outside where I took a spare hairbrush to him. My neighbor, Doug, was on his balcony maintaining his bicycle. A newly brushed cat will not last nearly as long as a newly cleaned and greased bicycle chain. In fact I hadn't made it back into the house before Doug burst into laughter and called me back.

There was Timothy Ming on his back in the warm dust, pleasurably wiggling back and forth. Even 24 hours hence, you can still pat him vigorously and see the dust fly!

Beginning Day for "My Life On West Pearl"

My Landscapes of Thought blog was originally intended to record my spiritual life and journey and to share writings, poems and quotes that touch my heart.

Almost immediately, however, it also began to contain portraits in words of my life here on West Pearl in Boulder. Over the weekend I realized I would feel more comfortable writing if I had separate places to journal about each of these things.

So welcome to my world on West Pearl! Here you will find entries written by my cat, Timothy Ming and a record of enounters with my wondrous neighbor, the Fox. Pictures of my neighborhood as it changes with the seasons. Stories from my life. Conversations I overhear at the tea shop. Things my friends have shared with me that are worth passing on.

These posts are "portraits" of life, drawn and painted in words. I hope you enjoy them.

World's Cleanest Cat!

The world's cleanest cat was found today to be residing in Boulder, CO. When asked how he had attained such a supreme level of cleanliness, Mr. Timothy Ming of West Pearl in Boulder, CO replied, "It is all due to the weather. For the past three days it has been just too cold to go outside. My companion, Dhyan, has very kindly opened the door each morning to allow me to inspect the weather for myself and each time I have opted to turn and go back inside. Since I really have nothing to do indoors except eat, sleep, bother Dhyan when she is at the computer, let her know when it is time to feed me again, look out the window, change sleeping locations, and play with ping pong balls... I have to do something with my time. I choose to wash. My specialty is 'between the toes' and 'behind the back legs.'"

Tim the Cat is certainly sparklingly white these days on his white parts and very soft and silky on his gray parts. But as he reminds us, "The first sunny day, you know, I will alternate my methods and take a dust bath. Then, of course, I will be more light brown on gray instead of white on gray."

Stay tuned.

An Old Friend

It's after midnight and I was up before dawn this morning. A long day... but I got the 9th section of my "12 Week Business Intensive" workbook done tonight. That is a good thing. Tomorrow I have on the agenda to finish the 10th and then it is practically all downhill until I have finished the 11th and 12th (the last.) This ninth one was the hardest as it is my attempt to condense into one learn-able process all the things I have learned about sales over the past 10 years. Sales is probably the hardest part of having your own business for most people.

You are probably wondering what Chatty Cathy has to do with all this. Actually, she has nothing to do with it! I just took her picture this morning and now here she is in my blog at the end of the day. She is an old friend of mine and I have had her out since Christmas. Just the other day I put her into this pink dress and she has been smiling away on the back of the couch ever since. Have you noticed that dolls from the era of my childhood (1950s and 60s) were all smiling and modern dolls often aren't? WHAT can doll makers be thinking? If you can't count on your DOLL smiling at you who CAN you count on? I wonder! : )

In any case, getting back to sales, I have been thinking all day about the 1000s of people who are about to get laid off at Caterpillar, Home Depot, Starbucks, Microsoft, and etc. They read the list on MSNBC tonight. I just feel for all these people, and for myself because business was so hard last year, and for my clients who have also been feeling the pinch. I am thinking tomorrow of writing an article for the internet about the pros and cons of starting your own business because I know some of those people who have just been laid off, or are about to be laid off, will be considering this option.

As for me, right now, I better get to bed. It is late, late, late and I have been trying to get up to enjoy that first light in the morning. Who knows... maybe I will see neighbor fox again if I get up early enough!

Friday Night Nonsense

Many Thanks to my friend Pattie Whitehouse in Canada for sending me the link to this wonderful YouTube Video: "There's No One As Irish as Barack O'Bama"

Here's a taste of the lyrics:

O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara
There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama

You don't believe me, I hear you say
But Barack's as Irish, as was JFK
His granddaddy's daddy came from Moneygall
A small Irish village, well known to you all

Toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a lama
There's no one as Irish As Barack O'Bama [and more!]

It's a fraction of itself without the music so here is the link so you can enjoy it for yourself.
http://www.oneeyedparrot.org/obama.html

Oh yes! Change has come! Isn't nice to be able to laugh again!

A Fox Morning

Perhaps because I have slept through it for nearly a year I am suddenly in love again with early morning. This morning I was reading a bit from "Everyday Zen," a book by the contemporary zen master, Charlotte Joko Beck, and was contemplating this sentence: "No matter what your life is, I encourage you to make it your practice" when I glanced over my shoulder and saw the Show of Light was on again in the east. I went for my camera and over the next 30 minutes took the pictures you see above. However the one that would have been the best didn't get taken.

I was sitting in the padded lawn chair with my feet tucked into the hem of my robe, meditating, when who should come trotting around the front of the house but the fox. He or she skirted the stone wall that borders my downstairs neighbor's driveway, turned, and came trotting straight up the stairs. Not to startle him with my unexpected presence, I politely said "hello" as he started up my walk. He was not in the least deterred. In fact he came straight on up the sidewalk until he was standing at the foot of the porch stairs just a few feet from my knee.

The fox stopped and looked me in the eyes. Despite the fact that I didn't have my glasses on, I could see how pointed and sharp were his whiskers, jet black against the delicate golden red of his muzzle and the golden loveliness of his intelligent eyes. We must have looked eye-to-eye for a few moments and I felt that wondrous sense again that neither was he afraid, nor was I. Then he decided to go up over my porch rather than come any closer to me by going around. Up and over he went, as silent on his paws as a cat, and disappeared into the backyard.

I consider foxes to be a totem of mine. Perhaps it is coincidental and self-confirmatory on my part, but when a fox appears out-of-the-blue, unafraid, and comes so close to me (or even when I spot one of these allusive creatures trotting along in the distance) I consider myself blessed, my day blessed, my contemplations affirmed. THIS morning I was doing the child eyes meditation when he appeared. Glasses off, I was looking at the world as if for the first (or last) time. I had already been struck by the wonder of naked branches against lightening sky, noticing how each and every tree in my neighborhood has a unique way of putting its twigs and limbs out into the world - like fingerprints. I had stopped thinking, for a moment, as my gaze suddenly widened and I began taking in the world, just as it was. And then the fox appeared and came right up to my knee to look me in the face.

It was beautiful at dawn again this morning. Now, with the Light Show over for the day, the morning looks a little "plain" - but I have had a reminder that you only have to use your child eyes in any moment to find the wonder of life again. And certainly I feel my day has been blessed by the direct gaze of a fox.

Inauguration Celebration!

I took most of the day off yesterday to watch the inauguration on television. I have waited for this day, hardly daring to believe it was really going to come and I couldn't take my eyes off it happening. The inauguration brought tears to my eyes! I cried over 2 million people being there; shouting, cheering, dancing, standing with tears running down their faces. I cried over the inaugural address, soaking in its message of change and hope. I laughed through tears over the Rev. Lowery's benediction. The sense of relief and hope lifted a weight from my heart I had been carrying so long I didn't know, until I put it down, just how heavy it was.

For the past four years especially I have watched as my small business and the business of my clients got harder and harder, making ends meet financially got tougher and tougher, and knew we were not even part of the statistics the government was keeping. I cringed over the violations of human rights being done on Guantanimo in the name of "national security." I was outraged that we were dragged into an exhausting and expensive war because we were told "weapons of mass destruction" were an immediate danger. There never WERE any weapons of mass destruction. Not one was ever found - just like the United Nations investigation said. We never got an apology from President Bush for his mistakes, to the end he left office declaring that "I always did what I thought was right." That times have become hard comes as no surprise to those of us who have been living at the grass roots during eight years of his administration. I'm just glad that if the stock market had to inevitably crash and foreclosures become an epidemic these things happened on the watch of the president who was responsible for them. I don't know which part of America he actually "cared about" but it wasn't the part I live in.

So I turn to this change with hope. I embrace the idea that we can solve our problems if we work hard and work together. I embrace we can have the audacity to hope that things can get better. I wanted a president who would care about global warming issues and our relationship with the rest of the world as well as about affordable health care for all and good education for our children. I'm glad he announced, with his predecessor sitting just a few feet from the podium, that America would no longer sacrifice our values in the name of national security and that torture being done by our government will end. I can start holding up my head again amongst my international friends and stop being ashamed of American policy.

Let this be a beginning for all of us! If you haven't done it yet, you might want to go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/ and see the ways in which our new president has already started making his administration "transparent" to us all. I'm looking forward to the weekly videos Pres. Obama will do on Saturday mornings and the blog updates that will keep me informed of what our new government is doing day to day. I am going to make a point of taking Pres. Obama up on his offer to review all legislation that crosses his desk before he signs it and sending in my opinion of it. I am going to look for ways to do my part - and one of these ways will be to donate a percentage of my work time to helping business owners who currently can't afford my kind of consulting but badly need it. I look forward to joining with others in my community to do volunteer work.

I DO believe we can create a different and better American life together. I am profoundly grateful to have witnessed this change.

Yes we can!

My Dad's Visit

My father came to visit me in Boulder... first time since my mother's death in September and, actually, the first time in a long time since my mother needed pretty constant care these past few years. They moved to Dallas in 2000 and my father said he missed snow. Obligingly, we had a really pretty snowstorm on Monday morning and this picture comes from the walk we took along Boulder creek the next day. "This snow is just right for making snowmen," he commented picking up a handful of snow and packing it lightly into a big snowball. Moments later it went flying into the creek where we watched it dissolve in the cold, cold water and float away in chunks.

Happy Day!

After days of protecting myself from the cold seeping in through the glass of the seven big picture windows in my house I woke up this morning to warm sun pouring through the windows. It is so warm out that I went out in my bare feet to put a handful of raw peanuts into the feeder for the squirrels. (And they call this winter!)

After days of not wanting to go outside, Tim is out cat-ing around in the sunlight. ("To Cat Around" - yes, it is a proper verb: I cat around, You cat around, He/She/It cats around, we cat around, etc. ... Now you can use it too!)

Yesterday I saw no fewer than five squirrels chasing around the trees and jockeying for position at the feeder.

This picture is for my friend, Annie, who tells me there are no squirrels in Australia. I wouldn't trade them for a kangaroo! : )

And, oh yes, I almost forgot - I finished my new website last night (at midnight!) Go take a look! http://www.thefiveessentialskills.com/ Another good reason to be happy this morning.

The Advantages of Living With A Human

"The main difference between cats and humans is that we, very sensibly, have paws, and they have these finger-things sticking off the end of their front legs. They are very clever with these fingers but their best use, in my opinion, is for the scratching of cats. Dhyan, over the years, has found the right places to apply these fingers (helped along by ample clues from myself such as purring loudly when she gets to the right spot.) She has become very good at scratching the places under my collar which are difficult to reach on my own and I have to admit that a good skritch up and down the back of the neck, around the ears, across the top of the head and under the chin is just about as good as you can get in life. I intend to keep her. Any cats reading this need not apply for a position in this house."

Timothy Ming
Owner and Companion of Dhyan

A Snowy Day and Meeting Cary

Early morning, looking West from my porch: I take this picture over and over ... every morning it looks like this I just feel compelled to grab my camera and take it again.

Walking home from Church I ran into my friend, Cary Sarlo, who used to live next door to me in my old neighborhood. He bought me a cup of coffee at Spruce Confections where we caught up on neighborhood gossip and our lives in general. He told me all about the area around Taos and Santa Fe in case my father would like to go home that route when he comes to visit me next week.

What a charming smile Cary has!

CARY AND THE RAT - A good story!

We laughed all over again at a shared experience: Once upon a time I was on the phone in my old house and looking out into my backyard when suddenly A RAT came skipping out from under the half fence between my yard and Cary's. I gasped aloud! A RAT! in my backyard. It went straight over to the pan of sunflower seeds on the ground at the base of the tree which I kept out for the squirrels and helped himself without fear or apology. I thought, "He doesn't know he is a RAT! He doesn't know he is considered vermin!" Here was a pan of seed left out free-to-all and he was happily helping himself.

Cary and I didn't know what to do about this rat who had probably come up from the creek that ran through our neighborhood looking for someplace out of the cold who stumbled on this shangrala of an opportunity... from a rat's perspective. He gnawed a hole in Cary's house and started living between the walls and in the crawl space above our townhouses. One night I heard him gnawing on the rafters above my bedroom. Clearly he had to go. But he was such a happy rat! I hated to do anything that would harm him.

Then one day Cary happened to be looking out into his back yard and saw the rat leave his hole and slip under the fence to go into my yard. Quick as a flash, he got out the board, hammer, and nails he had ready and blocked the entrance to the rat hole. From my side, I saw the rat eating at the feeder and then go the long way, around the end of the fence instead of under it, to go back to Cary's. He rounded the fence just as Cary started around it from the other side and they met face-to-face. The rat froze! Cary froze! And then the rat ran for its life back to the creek. We never saw him again!

I am afraid I have to confess that I teased Cary unmercifully... for a long time... about having a "face that would scare a rat!" : ) and yet, good-natured person that he is, HE was the one that brought the story up again today.

Remembering My Mother

My gentle friends remind me "Grief takes a long time and you will encounter pockets of it long after you think your grieving is over." There were many deaths this past year: my friend Jan Scarbrough, my mother, my little cat Katie, Larry, the nice manager at Lolita's who I considered my friend. My friends who have walked this path before tell me, "For the first year you will grieve at all the 'firsts': my first birthday without my mother, our first Christmas without her, New Year's Eve. My father told me last night, "We always kissed at midnight. This year she isn't here."

People don't generally like to read about grief, I think, so I will keep this short - but I also want to say that I am learning things from all these passings and so much loss in one year. I have been blessed up to this year by not having lost very many people I love to death, but a deep wondering has awakened inside me over the past few months about where that spark of life goes when it leaves its earthly body. Or does it simply go out... like a candle flame snuffed into darkness? Either way, the fact that we walk around in our bodies doing all these amazing things (seeing with our eyes; feeling with our hearts; hearing with our ears; connecting with our sensitive hands; thinking, planning, experiencing, forming ideas, judging, dreaming, imagining, creating with our minds, ... a million combinations of sensation and awareness every day which we so casually experience and forget... it all seems so amazingly wonderful at the moment and my heart fills with appreciation because I know, now, in a different way than I did before, that one day it will all be gone.

Time to take the Christmas Tree Down

After many years on the tree, the ornaments have become old friends. I pack them away carefully, each one wrapped in its own tissue paper or box, until the Day-After-Thanksgiving next year, when they will come out again. This holiday season passed very quickly and quietly.

For those of you who love ornaments, here is a web album of some of my favorites from my tree:

http://picasaweb.google.com/BoulderDhyan/ChristmasTreePictures#