Darkness and light

The end of Daylight Savings Time coincides generally with a real change in the weather in SF from the last gasps of summerlike weather to the definitely cooler and wetter days of fall and winter. The time change also produces a number of pleasant lighting effects, as yesterday evening I gathered with others at St. Gregory's for their Taizé service and the new evening darkness at 5:30 made the candles look just beautiful. The small room we meet in becomes more womb-like and intimate. In the morning, on the other hand, the sky is already indigo just before 6:00 a.m. as I stretch in the street, and sunlight is suddenly blazing as I walk out of the zendo at 7:00. I think this whole Daylight Savings Time program is worthwhile just for these effects, not to mention that extra hour of sleep you get once a year -- an event I missed this year, since I was in Arizona last weekend and they don't do DLT.

Speaking of dawn, the issue at HSZC over when to start the one-day sits has bloomed into a real controversy. The residents have closed ranks behind Y., who becomes the resident practice leader this week, while some members say they'll come sit with me at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday. It's a tempest in a teapot, to be sure. But it also demonstrates Y.'s awkwardness in dealing with people and his ignorance of how to lead a group without part of it rebelling.

Even I'm not that lazy

Coming up this Saturday is the usual all-day sit -- from 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. -- at the zen center I go to -- or so I thought. This morning after zazen there was a conversation in which I learned that Y. wants to cut the length of the event to 9:00 to 5:00 because he thinks the thirteen-hour schedule is too intimidating to newcomers. This shocked me, frankly. Francois, one of the residents, included me in the email thread later this morning, and I posted something to the effect that sitting at dawn is pretty basic to a meditation practice as far as I was concerned. I was gratified to see that some of the other lay members on the thread backed me up.

Actually I can't even do all day this time around, because on Saturday I have to prepare the house for Cris's birthday party that evening, and besides, my great friend Christine will be in town. But I did want to go at 5:00 for the first three sessions. So far it looks like it will be me and a few other people -- which is no different from most first Saturdays.

In other news, I was listening in my car today, as I do from time to time, to the local right-wing Christian radio station. And I heard two interesting things.

One was a little feature on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German anti-fascist pastor who was involved in plots to assassinate Hitler. The feature was a fairly straightforward recounting of his moral struggle to justify the use of violence (i.e. in killing Hitler) for a greater good (ending the war and Nazi tyranny). I thought to myself, "Uh oh, I can see what's coming." Sure enough, the moral of the story, as presented on the right-wing Christian radio station, was that war on Iraq was justified. So typical.

Hearing that didn't surprise me, but the next thing I heard did. The host of the evening live show, Craig Roberts, launched into an aggressive attack on Fred Phelps. The virulent anti-gay "preacher" is reportedly still planning to visit the Bay Area. Instead of picketing the funeral of Eddie Arajo Jr. -- a transgendered youth who was murdered early this month -- Phelps has decided to picket several conservative East Bay churches that released a statement condemning Arajo's murder as well as the local high school, which is presenting "The Laramie Project." Uncharacteristically, the conservative talk show host strongly attacked Phelps, his tactics, his message and his entire enterprise.

I had wondered for a long time where, if anywhere, that radio station would draw the line, and now I know. There are right-wingers that even the right-wingers can't stand. At least we can agree on the most extreme bigots. It's not much, but it's something.

Aww, the sad clown

I saw the Jerry Seinfeld documentary Comedian today, and greatly enjoyed its inside view of the life of a performer. The film shows J.S. as he "starts from scratch" with all new material -- though he travels to gigs by private jet and stays in five-star hotel suites -- and contrasts his angst with the positively maniacal anhedonia of an up-and-coming comic named Orny Adams. It's a wonderful backstage view of the neuroses of performers in this age of saturation media.

However, looking for references on the web, I spotted this capsule review (bottom of page) by Dennis Lim in the Village Voice, and found myself agreeing with every word, including the bit about "the redeptive ending that Seinfeld would have mocked." I also found, for the first time, the Metacritic website, which is a wonderful resource.

Liberals minus 1

I was in a taxi on the way to the airport when Cris rang with the news that Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash this morning. Bloody hell. It's already all over the news, of course, so I won't even post a link. That's one less voice of reason in the Senate -- here's hoping Jesse Ventura, governor of Minnesota, has enough sense to... oh, jeez, this doesn't look good at all.

Closer to home, the funeral for murdered tranny Eddie Arajo, Jr. is expected to attract not only hundreds of friends and mourners, but also the inimitable and revolting Fred Phelps et al. from Topeka, the group that makes Jerry Falwell look like a fag-lover. This blogger, WilliamTed, has "plans." No good can come of that, I'm afraid.

Update: The funeral came off without a visit from the hateful Kansans.

Who preaches, who gets preached to

Reminder: there will be big anti-war protests on Saturday in San Francisco and Washington DC.

I can't go -- I'll be in Phoenix, visiting family. But if I were there, I would bring several CDs and just stand in the crowd listening to them. Whatever is said at these events is of absolutely no import to anybody. Everyone who's there already is against the war, and short of being whipped into a frenzy and going in to sack City Hall, there is nothing whatsoever anybody can say that would spur any kind of meaningful action. (Sacking City Hall would not even be meaningful.) In fact, I would be tempted to bring a huge sign that said nothing but CHOIR, and stand in the middle of the crowd. Going to huge protests is a waste of time in most senses, of course, except for the fact that the entire message of the protest is in the simple count of bodies. If there are only ten thousand people there, Bush shrugs. If there are 200,000 people there, it might get a wee bit more attention. That's the only reason to go. So go.

 

This week's pathetic losers

The winner of this week's award for the most pathetic losers -- an award that has never been awarded before and may never be awarded again, despite the plethora of nominees screaming for attention -- is Two Towers Protest, dedicated to the idea that the title of the upcoming film "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" is "hate speech" because people might get it confused with those other two towers, and that would be "insensitive."

I'm too tired to list all the other losers -- last night was another family-related late night. We took Cris's aunt to the airport and didn't get back until 12:30 in the morning. Then I would have slept in, but I had agreed to go to my friend Sara's house "on my way to zazen" at 5:40 a.m. to get a key. So I woke up just for that, went home and got back into bed, and slept til 10:00 a.m. It's a wonder I'm getting any meditation in at all this week.

Drizzle

Horrible drizzly weather for the last couple of days. The San Francisco summer drought isn't supposed to end like this, with weather that's more likely in July. It's supposed to end with a big rainstorm after a single hazy day.

This morning while sitting zazen, for some reason I got the idea to leave after the bell and before the "service" of prostrations and chanting -- something which is permitted but which I've never done. I tend to think that if you're going to be there and sit, you should join in the whole thing, including the work period afterward. But when the bell rang I got up and quickly booked on out of there. I had breakfast and read the paper, and after the phone woke Cris up, I went in to read the morning paper with her in bed. Then I got sleepy and took a delicious nap -- if you call sleeping from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. a nap. Then I stayed home and worked on my novel. Cris was gardening and the cats hung out with her and didn't bother me, so I got another 1000 words done.

I just finished watching the end of game 4 of the World Series. I haven't seen a single game in its entirety.

End of an Eva

Sunday night at 11:15, I was just getting into bed, trying to calculate how tired I'd be the next morning having gotten up at 5:00 to do zazen. I was just starting to fall asleep when the phone rang. It was the Alzheimer's care facility in suburban Fairfield where Cris put her mother two and a half years ago. Cris's mother Eva, 79, had just died in her sleep.

I got up and dressed while Cris called her sisters who live in Oakland and suburban Walnut Creek, and the four of us went out to Fairfield, about sixty miles from San Francisco. We got there a little before 2:00 a.m. Of course the streets near the "home" were utterly quiet, so when we came into the facility we startled by the sight of a dozen elderly residents cheerfully milling about the lobby. "Why aren't they in bed?" exclaimed one of Cris's sisters. Cris said that staying up all night and walking around is a typical stage Alzherimer's patients go through; indeed, her own mother had gone through this phase during most of the first half of the 1990s.

We were led to the sparely furnished but comfortable room where Eva lay in bed on her back. Her mouth was open and her eyes were half open, giving her a pitiful countenance, a sight made even more pitiful when the covers were pulled back to reveal her emaciated body. Like many late-stage Alzheimer's patients, Eva had more or less starved to death as her ability to swallow had been erased by the advancing deterioration of her brain; her way was eased by hospice care and morphine for the last two months.

There was little for us to do but wait for the undertaker's van and sign a paper, but while we waited through the night for this simple act, we held vigil by Eva's body, talking alternately about the 15 years of her illness and what it had put us all through, and also about our own busy lives. Finally the man came and the sisters said their final goodbye, and we drove back, dropping the sisters off as we'd picked them up, and arriving home a little after 5:30 -- just about the time I would be going off to zazen. I didn't go off to zazen, though -- we both went right to bed, tuckered out.

So. Man. It's the end of an era that saw Cris and I, as well as her sisters, contributing enormous time and money to Eva's care, through a succession of housekeepers, live-in caregivers, and care facilities. Eva's illness had a huge effect on our lives -- as any serious long-term illness does on the lives of the family it strikes. First among these effects is probably the imperative for both Cris and I to stay in full-time jobs throughout the fourteen years since we returned from teaching in Japan, since we needed the money for Eva's care. This, and the need to stay close to the Bay Area, limited our mobility; we couldn't move to New York or Buenos Aires even if we could afford it (which, in the last couple of years, we could. Paradoxically, the worse Eva's illness got, the less it cost us, since it cost a lot less to keep her in care facilities than to employ full-time caregivers).

It's impossible to say how our lives might change now. We'll save the several hundred dollars a month we were still contributing to her care, but we'll still have to stay close to the Bay Area, for Cris still has an elderly aunt in San Francisco. So I don't expect any big lifestyle changes. But psychologically, it's a real high-water mark in our lives.

Weekend

Sitting here watching the uterly wacky second game of the World Series between the Giants and the Angels. There have been about ten home runs in the first three innings, plus a one-in-a-million play in which Giants pitcher Russ Ortiz accidentally hit the bat of the Angels batter on his shoulder as he ducked away from the pitch, with the ball dribbling fair, leading to a put-out at first. That was wild. Now they're in the 5th, and things have calmed down a little.

Jenny's performance Friday night was swell, and so was the showing of The Hidden Fortress at the Castro. I'd never seen it in a theater, and didn't even know it was wide screen. Wow! I also had the pleasure of introducing Dina, up from L.A., to the film.

I'm getting pretty good at telling people about losing my job, why that isn't a bad thing, how I'm making progress on my novel, and how we think we can handle the layoff for several months, giving me a chance to finish the book. It's a happy story so I don't mind saying it over and over.

Things to do and see

My friend Jenny Schaffer is among the performers in the All Women, All Improv show at 848 performance space in San Francisco at 8:00 pm tonight. Jenny is a talented physical performer with an amazing voice, when she cuts loose. She may well do so tonight.

The Castro Theater is in the middle of the same Kurosawa/Mifune film festival that was playing last month at the Film Forum in New York, and tomorrow they're showing one of my favorite films of all time, The Hidden Fortress. This film not only has everything -- comedy, drama, pathos, great samurai fights, singing and dancing -- but it was one of the main influences of the film Star Wars. I can't say enough about this great movie -- go see it!

Poet Kim Addonizio, a National Book Award finalist a couple years ago and a former regular contributor to my zine Frighten the Horses, is one of the folks producing and reading at a book party for Dorothy Parker's Elbow, a collection of literary work about tattoos. That's at 8:00 pm Saturday at the Edinburgh Castle Pub, 950 Geary St. near Polk, in San Francisco.

Finally, check out A Day in the Life of Africa (link courtesy of the highly useful and amusing Boing Boing.)

Correction

Yesterday I had the honor of hearing from Uberchick, who I mentioned in my entry on Sep. 24. She told me she was not the "gorgeous" but "boring straight girl" depicted in a set of posted photographs of some party she attended. There were two Asian females at that party, she informs me, and besides, she's not even straight. However, she did not point me to a picture that was of her, so she continues to be a woman of mystery to me and the rest of her readers, which is no doubt how she wants it. Hi Uberchick! Thanks for reading my blog, which is more boring than your blog.

I had a thought this morning about this blog. Like a huge number of other bloggers, I am now unemployed after laboring for some time in the high tech industry. Maybe I labored longer than most of them -- since 1993, when a lot of them were probably in the 10th grade -- but I'm pretty much in the same boat, except that they're all 26 and I'm 46.

Did you know that, if you're over 40 and you get laid off, they have to give you a sheet that shows the breakdown by job title and age of everyone who got hit in the same layoff and everyone who survived? So now I have this list that shows that, of the three people who got laid off in my department, two are over 40 (including me), two are female (not including me), and one is a manager (me). What this tiny sample shows, I don't know, except that everyone they laid off wasn't over 40 or female, in which case they probably would have been in trouble. What it doesn't show is that, of the three people laid off, two of them (including me) had high salaries. I know becase the other two people reported to me.

Anyway, on with my new life. What I was going to say, before that tangent, is that I had a thought, to wit: my blog is going to get a little repetitive now. Before, I could talk a little about work, and about writing my novel, and about being downtown, and about the trips I took for business, and about zazen. Now I can't write about any of those things except writing my novel and zazen. So bear with me. I'll try to find something to write about.

By the way, the title is 'Make Nice'

It's official: I'm not getting that job I interviewed for last week. The woman called today and we had a nice face-saving conversation all around. Which is so important in business.

That means I'm free for the rest of the year to finish my book. That makes me so happy. I've never had this kind of freedom in my life -- several weeks of severance, followed by months of unemployment. I feel like I won the lottery. I know that's not the way you're supposed to feel when you lose your job. Indeed, everyone I tell about the layoff has been perfectly willing to commiserate with me, until I tell them I look on it as a good thing. And maybe I won't feel this way for long. If Cris were to lose her job, that would certainly change my tune. But til then, you're looking at the latest and most grateful recipient of the Tech Bust Literary Prize for Halfway-Finished Novels.

TV land

I noticed Monday that one of the news channels, I forget whether it was MSNBC or Fox News, now has a slogan, or perhaps it's the title of their coverage of Bush's warmongering: "Countdown to Iraq." But maybe I'm just not very observant. I see a Google search on the phrase "Countdown to Iraq" gets a number of articles returned, most of them about Bush's speech to the UN in September, like this piece from the Guardian (U.K.).

I don't want anyone to think I'm just sitting around watching TV. I wrote another 750 words today, i.e. scene 21b, sitting in a cafe on Church St. Then I came back and exercized, and now I'm watching the ballgame.

Sunday night my friend Jenny, who is also one of the tech writers on the team I was just managing before I got laid off, and two of the other writers took me out to dinner. That was awful nice of them. Thanks guys! I'll miss you.

Please stand by

I don't know why, but sometimes when I edit an existing entry (to fix spelling errors, for instance), Blogger gets it mixed up with the previous entry. So now my entry titled "Whatever works" has been concatenated with the entry I did the day before. At least this snafu didn't make today's entry completely incomprehensible. I'm not going to try to fix it, either -- I've learned from experience that that just makes things worse.

Whatever works

To the list of unlikely images that help my meditation, add the sound of Kenny Lofton's single in the Giants' pennant-winning victory last night over the St. Louis Cardinals. This sound -- specifically, the replay of Jon Miller's call on KNBR, beginning in pleasureable anticipation, becoming sharp through the pitch and the batter's swing, then a rising tone recounting the hit that reaches right field, and finally a positively hysterical jumble of voices as David Bell scores the winning run from second -- I heard on the radio in the car on the way to zazen at 5:45 a.m. And far from exciting me or creating a distraction, it formed the calm foundation of one of the best 40 minutes of meditation I've had in weeks.

It's not like I sat there replaying the call in my head. Instead, I understood the essence of Miller's ability to form a clear, coherent narration of the events as they rapidly unfolded second-by-second. This ability -- man, it's not easy -- is rooted in a complete, alive attentiveness to the moment, as well as in a deep knowledge of the game which allows the announcer to anticipate, if only intuitively, what might happen. The announcer waits calmly, discerning what's happening in the relationship between pitcher and batter, baserunners and fielders, even when pitch after pitch it seems like nothing's happening. Then a ball is hit and action explodes and the good announcer is completely on top of the play. He doesn't freeze on the baserunner's name, he doesn't forget the terms that apply to the play-- like "line drive" or "the third base line" -- and injects precisely the amount of excitement appropriate to the moment.

Contrast this fluency with a Cubs color announcer I heard once while driving through Illinois. The Cubs pitcher struck out a batter at a dramatic moment, and instead of being able to describe what the pitcher had done to hoodwink the batter, the announcer merely exclaimed, "Man, what a pitch!" This on radio -- how opaque can you get?

So when I arrived at the zendo and sat down, I tried to sit with the baseball announcer's calm attentiveness. And it really worked. Railroad crossing signal, baseball announcer --whatever works.

Anti-war action opportunity

Much to my embarrassment, several large anti-war demonstrations have come and gone here in San Francisco, without me even being aware of them until they're on the evening news. Friday was the latest, when several hundred people blockaded, or attempted to blockade, the Federal Building. (SF Gate news story) That brought me fond memories of winter 1991, when me and about 300 other Queer Nation demonstrators filled out a whole side of the building in the demonstration to mark the beginning of the Gulf War. (Are we going to have to start calling it the First Gulf War, or Gulf War I?)

Now I've found a site with information on the next big demo, to take place Oct. 26. I'll hate to miss it, too -- I'm going to be out of town that day.

Don't piss them off

Jerry Falwell, the clown prince of the religious right, apologized yesterday, six days after "60 Minutes" broadcast Falwell's assertion that the prophet Muhammed was "a terrorist... a violent man, a man of war." After his comments led to fatal riots and a death decree for Falwell himself, the Baptist preacher retracted his remarks.

Of course he'll say anything -- it's his stock in trade, it made him famous, why should he stop now? It would be like expecting Darryl Strawberry to quit drugs and start a soup kitchen. What I want to know is, how can anybody take this guy seriously enough even to put him on television? Do the producers of "60 Minutes" really think he represents anybody but the most ignorant yahoos? Just look at him.

Progress report

I usually can't work at home. The cats demand too much attention, and it's hard to concentrate if Cris is also in the house. But this morning she left to visit her mother in Fairfield, and the cats were reasonably self-sufficient. So I got 1600 words done, the beginning of chapter 21. That feels great.

Now I'm off to HSZC to help with a garage sale. Yes, the zen center has garage sales too.

Sit still like a railroad crossing signal

Now that I'm unemployed -- here it is the end of the week, and I haven't heard back about that other job at the company, so I am assuming that job is not going to happen -- I have more time to do all those things I've been meaning to do. Fix the car, exercise, and work on my novel, for example. And, of course, to watch TV.

You know how there are certain things from your childhood that you remember incompletely? A vivid but partial memory of a song, a movie, a TV show, or maybe a place you visited. You saw it once and you remember some things clearly, but the context and especially the title are gone. I have a bunch of orphaned memories like this. Yesterday, through the magic of daytime cable TV, I cleared one of them up. I was dialing around on cable when I hit upon a movie called Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968) -- an unremarkable light comedy about a bunch of nuns and their schoolgirl charges. The sequel to the 1966 hit "The Trouble with Angels," WAGTF is about several nuns taking a couple dozen hyperactive teenage girls across the country to a some religious conference in California. (In the 1960s most of the people in the U.S. still lived east of the Mississippi and thought of California as a strange, distant land, usually reached only by a long road trip. And you could still make a movie about nuns running a Catholic boarding school.) This is the kind of movie I used to go see as a little kid in Edwardsville, Ill., where we'd go see whatever was playing in the town's one movie theater.

Two scenes from this movie, the title and premise of which I otherwise forgot completely for decades, stuck in my mind my whole life. In one, Stella Stevens, who plays the young Vatican II-hip nun, faces down a not-very-menacing gang of bikers. And in the other, the bus nearly gets stuck on a railroad grade crossing as a train approaches.

The latter scene, for some reason, was particularly memorable for me. In this scene, the estrogen-laden bus approaches a rural grade crossing at night. All is completely quiet and peaceful. The driver -- the stereotyped batty, slightly masculine nun -- stops and looks both ways. Nothing's coming, so they start across. As they're right in the middle of the tracks, the warning signals suddenly start clanging and flashing, and the started driver jams on the brakes and the bus stalls out. Then we have the overly drawn-out scene where all the girls and nuns, except for the driver, evacuate the bus before the onrushing train reaches them, and the driver manages to get the bus started at the last moment, of course, and makes it across.

It was the beginning of the scene that stuck in my mind -- the utter quiet except for the bus gently stopping and then starting again, and then the startled reaction as the signals began blaring. And for more than thirty years I remembered that, whenever I drove across a railroad track, but forgot the whole rest of the movie.

So that was yesterday. This morning I was having a typically bad time sitting zazen, with a painful back and wandering attention and the usual drowsiness. Then just before the end, I remembered that scene from the movie: the peaceful rural grade crossing at night, a silent warning signal in the foreground of the frame. And -- it sounds funny --suddenly I realized the pacefulness and alertness of that signal, standing straight and tall, just watching and waiting for the moment it has to fulfill its purpose and warn of an approaching train. Then all my drowsiness left me and I sat straight and tall and attentively, just like that signal. I suddenly was able to do what I haven't been able to do well for a couple of weeks, focus on my breath.

For three breaths. Then the bell rang.

As if the war weren't enough

Aileen Wuornos, whose story has been told in countless articles as well as a documentary film and even an opera, was executed today by the state of Florida.

Wuornos became a symbol of many things for many people in the early 1990s. A white trash dyke who turned to truck stop prostitution and killed the johns whom (she said) abused her, Wuornos represented everything from justifiable female rage (to lesbian and anti-abuse activists) to "the first female serial killer" (to tabloid journalists).

Links:
- page on prisonactivist.org
- she gives up appeals, wants execution
- Wuornos is found competent to be executed
- a timeline from Orlando Sentinel

Death of a hummingbird

I went this morning for my one and only job interview, in this my new period of unemployment. My (now former) boss had steered me to this opening elsewhere in the company, and at first it sounded perfect for me. But by the time the interview ended I think the (putative) boss had decided otherwise. She was concerned that a job where I wasn't a manager would be a come-down for me. I wasn't very concerned about that, and tried to convince her of it; but I was also concerned that the job might have a technical component I couldn't handle.

In any case, walking out to my car I felt rather relieved. I thought, Whoopee, now I can work on my book for the rest of the year! All we have to do is watch our finances. I drove home along 101, noticing the layer of smog that had settled on the bay in the third day of this heat wave, and when I got to my block parked across the street. An hour later I got a parking ticket for parking during street cleaning. Got to watch those finances, yeah.

I was looking at the online form to file for unemployment when I wandered into the kitchen to get something to drink. There I noticed a mass of what looked like tiny dark shards on the floor, and in their midst, the carcass of what was clearly a hummingbird. Now an ex-hummingbird. What looked like shards of plastic were actually its tiny dark feathers. It must have mistakenly flown in the window and been snagged by one of our cats. Cris examined the carcass more carefully and declared the bird's neck had not been broken, and that the cat killed it by biting into its heart, the bloodthirsty little thing. That's her first bird kill, at least inside the house -- goodness knows how many she's snagged out there in the garden.

I felt bad for the hummingbird, as one is bound to -- they are such beautiful, useful creatures. But one can't blame the cat either -- in fact, I felt compelled to praise her. She was only fulfilling her role. It reminded me of the cat -- hardly more than a kitten -- belonging to an old girlfriend. One day it brought in a dead mouse and stood over it proudly. We duly praised the mighty hunter. Next day, another mouse -- not the same one, either. More praise. Next morning, having apparantly rousted all the mice, it showed up and presented us with a Snickers wrapper. What could we do but give the cat more praise -- which it accepted with pride and then went off and took a nap in the sunlight.

Including 'and' and 'the'

Mary McCarthy's antipathy toward Lilian Hellman's book Scoundrel Time was such that she famously stated, "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'" -- which has got to be one of the great cappers of the 20th century.

I was reminded of this statement today during Bush's speech on Iraq. I was sitting on the couch, waiting for the Giants-Braves playoff game to start. They held the game so Bush could speak, and he was on ten channels. I couldn't bear to watch it, really, but from time to time I forced myself to turn it on for a sentence at a time. And every sentence was a lie. Like:

This nation in world war and in cold war has never permitted the brutal and lawless to set history's course.

God almighty.

Though I don't have to go into work -- because I don't have a job -- I still got up at 5:00 and went to meditate. Y. kept his mouth shut today, so I had nothing to complain about. Maybe somebody said something to him. Then I went home and went right back to bed for three hours. I spent much of the day -- a clear, hot day with blazing sun, so typical of early fall here -- doing errands and puttering around the house. We're still working in the office, rearranging files. We have the world's worst shredding machine, so bad that it jams after every third sheet, no matter how careful you are. The last time we had a bag of bank and credit card statements to get rid of, I ended up taking them into the office and shredding them there.

Tomorrow I have an interview at the company that just laid me off. If I get this new job, I'll work it. If I don't, I'll stay home all winter and finish my book. I feel it's a win-win situation, so whatever happens, I'm happy. I should have this week, at least, to loaf, though.

I mean whatever happens with my employment situation -- which is so trivial compared to the fact that Bush is getting us into a war that will piss off the entire Arab world for the next forty years. Never mind my employment situation -- if you live in New Delhi, I'd seriously consider moving.

Jelly with nuts

Just back from an all-day "sit" at the zendo. Y. was not present, and so we got to gossip about him a little. Turns out others are not happy with his sermonettes either -- I feel vindicated. At least I feel vindicated in the parts that are neither sore nor exhausted. Sitting was difficult today. No good sessions of settling into my breath, no revelations about my book -- just a lot of hard work sitting. "Jelly with nuts" refers to the texture of my back (as well as to the typical regional sweet of a certain mountainous region of Argentina we visited a few years ago. When we asked them to serve us the typical dessert of the region, we got strawberry jam with walnuts. Well, it was sweet.)

At least I stuck it out for the whole day. By the end of the day it was just me and one other person. Two of the residents didn't even show, and a third was in and out all day. The pikers!

Now it's a quick change of clothes, and off to the symphony.

It's just business

For his latest trick, Y. had us restore the Robe Chant, but at the end of zazen instead of the beginning. This preserves his ability to make a grand entrance accompanied by his factotum. He delivered another aphorism today -- something about how the ten directions of the universe are the same as the "body of the way-seeker." I'm sitting there thinking, "Woo woo woo woo." Then, avoiding his grammatical gaffe of yesterday, he added simply, "Please study this carefully." I didn't, but I did manage to sit very still for the whole period. I'm already getting over the guy. I won't let him puncture my practice, such as it is.

Then I went right in to work, and to my great surprise, got laid off. Somehow management decided to reduce the size of the technical writing team. I spent most of the rest of the day cleaning up my office and commiserating with my soon-to-be former co-workers, all of whom had very nice things to say about me.

I didn't get any chance to sit around at home, though, since Cris had a huge house project scheduled. We picked up a bunch of furniture we'd ordered from a store on Valencia St. and got two undocumentistos (I just made that up) to help us unpack it, set it up, and get rid of the tables and bookshelves we replaced. Now it's late in the evening. The Giants lost, I got laid off, and I'm really tired.

Fortune cookie

Y. was back in the zendo today. As before, he made a grand entrance that eliminated the Robe Chant. But this time he had with him some sort of companion. It was X., a young woman who had also come to the dinner last Friday night. At the time I thought, "Oh, he brought his girlfriend," but I didn't think much more of it. But this time she entered with him and sort of dogged his heels, as if she were his attendant. I knew that high-ranking monks at Tassajara had attendants but I'd never seen anything like it at Hartford Street.

I should probably make clear that Hartford Street Zen Center is the queer zen center in San Francisco; it's half a block from Castro Street; it was founded by a former drag queen/party boy-turned-zen monk. And I say that not because I think it's wrong for a straight guy to be the practice leader or even to bring his girlfriend, but if he's going to be an arrogant, passive-aggressive straight man whose girlfriend is his attendant, he's going to seem a little out of place.

So he did all his prostrations and sat down. Silence in the place. There was quite a crowd: all four residents were there, along with me, Lucky, and a woman who's on the board, in addition to Andy Capp and Wilma. Silence for a good thirty minutes -- perhaps a little stiff, but it was okay with me. I was feeling angry at the guy, but I was also thinking, maybe this bozo has been sent here to teach me patience and forebearance. Maybe I need to just chill out. I should give the guy another chance.

Then suddenly I hear the guy's voice. He's decided to throw in a little mini-... Well, I don't know what it was. He spoke some aphorism about how heaven and earth are separated by a "hair's breadth," and added, "Let your mind accord."

I'm sitting there thinking, Let my mind accord?? That's not even a verb.

Then he clammed up and we sat there for the remainder of the period. I reflected on his outburst. The only time I ever heard anyone speak during zazen was when John King announced the death of Philip Whalen. That was appropriate since Whalen was the former roshi of the temple. Compared to the gravity and drama of that morning, Y.'s blatt today was about as significant as a fortune cookie. Then to top it all off, after the service X. paraded out with him -- so pretentious! And they went upstairs and disappeared; down in the zendo the rest of us relaxed and chatted and met the new resident.

It's silly, of course, for me to let myself get so worked up about it. It's no skin off my nose if the guy wants to make nonsense pronouncements. But pretentiousness has always really pushed my buttons. I wonder what everyone else thinks.