YES!

JOB WELL DONE

The work on the garden is finished. Well, this one project anyway. The work on a garden is never finished. Some pictures of the results on the deck:

And down below:

And the person responsible...

Shelly believes that all human beings need to be in touch with the land. She sees her work with plants as healing. "It's therapy," she says. I'm working on a bird of paradise plant whose roots and stems have become so impacted that it can no longer breathe. "Therapy for whom?" I ask: "For me or the plant?"

Obviously, it's for both. I'm pretty proud of my work on the miniature roses, too...

Next, the Buddha garden needs attention. Better be careful, or I'll get hooked!

SHOWER

Up ahead this coming Sunday we have the much-anticipated baby shower for our daughter. With more than forty people due to descend upon us for the afternoon, the preparations have begun. There are both advantages and disadvantages being married to a perfectionist. I admire Ellie's insistence that everything be just right, but I'll confess it also drives me a little crazy. One of the great features of our Los Angeles home is the big deck right outside the living area, overlooking the lower garden and with a view of the Hollywood Hills and the city of Hollywood itself. It has been six years since we worked on the potted plants that grace this area, and the time had clearly come--especially with the shower approaching--to freshen it up. Many of the plants have become compacted in their pots, some have seen their best days, some have simply grown fatigued or died. They get a great deal of sunlight, sometimes very hot, so it's hardly surprising that some have done a losing battle with the elements. Bottom line: they needed expert care and attention.

Enter Shelley and Ken of World Wide Exotics (this one, from their website...

... perhaps a shade too exotic for our deck! Looks like a dinosaur to me)--and their quietly industrious assistant Marcos...

They have their own nursery out in Sylmar, and came armed with big bags of soil to replenish the dirt, and new plants to replace some of the old. They have been working on the project for a good part of the day and--because they got lost on their way here and arrived considerably later than planned--they'll need to come back tomorrow to complete the job. Meantime, some process pictures:

This corner, I think, is done...

It looks like we'll have a beautiful--well, still more beautiful--deck for Sunday. It's always a pleasure to watch experts go to work, and these guys certainly qualify. There is a passionate quality, too, that is delightful and infectious. We ended up the day much pleased with what is shaping up.

ONLY CONNECT

It has become a commonplace, these days, to observe how dependent we have all become on our "connectivity." What a word! It throws us--I should speak for myself: it throws me--into a near panic, at least a conniption, when my computer fails to connect me with the Internet. It happens frequently on our travels. Most recently it happened first in London, of all places, and then again in New York City. You'd think, wouldn't you, that whatever magic makes the digital connection is simply in the air in those great cities, instantly available when you open up your laptop. But no. There are always the unexpected hindrances. It requires patience--more, I confess, than I have--to make the necessary intricate adjustments, to find the new codes and passwords, to hit exactly the right combination that unlocks the door.

These thoughts were prompted on our return home by the box that awaited me from AT&T: a new modem and a new device (name?) that broadcasts the signal through the house, operating not only the online access for the computers but also the television reception and recording system. We had been increasingly plagued, before we left, by intermittent lapses in the service, especially in Ellie's upstairs office, and I had asked our trust assistant Emily to get AT&T on the case during our absence. The box in the garage was the result of her efforts. A do-it-yourself solution to our problems.

Well, I tried. To say that my skills in electronic assembly would be an understatement, but this looked simple enough. Until I reached the instruction that told me to connect the gray cable. Where the gray cable was supposed to be, there were three green cables. I was flummoxed. I awaited Emily's arrival yesterday afternoon. She is, of course, being much younger and much smarter in these matters, a good deal more competent than I. She looked at the instruction sheet, carefully mapped out with explicit visual aids for dummies, and she too had to admit defeat. We called the company.

Hand it to At&T, their tech guy arrived promptly the next morning. I did not feel quite so stupid as I watched him work under my desk for a good couple of hours before testing out the system. Everything worked. And worked better than before. Faster. With no interruptions. I remarked upon his genius, but he was modest: you soon get to understand how these things work, he explained. It takes a couple of weeks...

So here I sit, thinking about connection, and how dependent I have become upon it. I was writing just a couple of days ago about my (relatively benign) addictions. This is another one. Was a day when a letter would take four or five days to make the journey between writer and recipient through the post; even longer, or course, if you go back a century or two. Now I notice my impatience if the email fails to load in more than a few seconds. The joy of opening a letter from a loved one has been replaced by the chore of working through fifty advertisements and other spam before reaching a few lines of personal communication in the form of hastily-written, mis-spelled, ungrammatical shorthand blitzes of verbiage. Words are rarely used as the medium I have always loved, but as the conveyers of instant messages, quickly eyed and just as quickly trashed with the delete button.

It's foolish, though, to wax nostalgic. I shall have grown old, indeed, when I can no longer adapt to the changes in the culture in which I live and work. For the present, where would I be, as a writer, without the miracle of the Internet and the opportunity it offers to communicate with my fellow human beings throughout the world? It has brought with it a privilege I would be ungracious not to recognize. But then I think of those moments on our recent journey when I actually met, face to face, with people with whom I can communicate normally only with the aid of the computer, via email, or Skype, or this blog I write.

I'm thinking not only of family and old friends. That was indeed a treat, to spend time with my sister, my son and his family, the friends I have mentioned in along the way in my recent entries. I'm thinking also of those fellow bloggers--Fiona and Kaspa of A River of Stones and Writing Our Way Home; and Jean of Tasting Rhubarb--met in person for the first time, after following them online. I'm thinking of meeting for the first time with the Blankfort family, Ellie's relatives in New York, contacted only courtesy of the Internet. I'm thinking of the kind orthodontist who helped us through the maze of the subway in Manhattan, and with whom we are now in touch thanks to the same digital marvel. These are connections that would have been scarcely imaginable before.

The best, warmest, and most intimate human connection is through the senses: touch, sight, hearing... These things cannot be replaced. There is a richness and a depth to it that can simply not be replicated in electronic form. Written words--unless in the form of poetry, perhaps, or a song--cannot express love with the same intensity as a single glance, a touch of the fingers, a whisper. The fulness of human relationship can only be truly experienced in person. Failing which, however, I'm grateful to have the proxy of online contact. To be able to "reach out and touch"--even if only digitally--is a treasure not to be ignored.

BUSINESS

For the last leg of our trip, we had used accumulated miles to buy business class tickets. It makes a huge difference--not only in the leg room, but also in the food, the entertainment options, the quality of service from check-in to baggage claim. I dread to think how much it would have cost had we actually sprung for the privilege in cash, but the miles were sitting there and needed to be used.

Awakening this morning in the familiar environment of our own house, our own bed, (and our own dog, George, on the bed with us!) I found myself thinking about how much air travel has to teach us about dukkha--that suffering referred to in the Buddha's First Noble Truth. To be sitting in a marginally comfortable seat for five tedious hours, 35,000 miles above the earth, traveling at 500 miles per hour, with two hundred other suffering human beings--some of them, to our rear, suffering very much more than business selves!--has to be at least one of life's less than comfortable experiences.

This realization gave me the opportunity to reflect upon some of the strategies I use to distract myself from discomfort, namely, in this case: food and drink, entertainment, and of course crossword puzzles. I use these not only when traveling by air. I use them at home, too. For the month before leaving on this particular trip, I had taken the trouble to be circumspect about the food and drink; I had been watchful of my tendency to over-indulge in food, for comfort's sake rather than actual need; and I had mostly avoided the wine that I love so much--and a glass or two of which usually prove an excellent palliative. Traveling for these couple of weeks, I had rapidly fallen back into old habits, to preserve that admittedly artificial level of comfort in the stress of travel. My addiction to the screen with flickering images and stories remained for the most part unfed; and crosswords were few and hard to find.

My addictions are harmless enough, I suppose. I have no wish to beat myself up about them too severely. The point is, though, that I do use them as palliatives. They do not cure the pain of dukkha--the suffering we all share as human beings--but they disguise it. So it serves me to recognize and acknowledge how they function. The release from suffering that the Buddha holds out as a possibility will not happen so long as the distractions, no matter how harmless, remain comfortingly hidden from view. "Here endeth," as I recall my father saying the altar, after reading the appropriate passage from the Book of Common Prayer, "the lesson for the day."

NEW YORK: LAST DAY

(Posted Monday, after our return.)

We started out our last day in New York City in our very pleasant breakfast room, overlooking 23rd Street....

Having contacted a long-lost cousin several weeks ago, Ellie had arranged to meet him and his family for lunch, and he had suggested a drive out along the Hudson River to their country home. He was at our hotel promptly at noon, and we headed north along Riverside Drive and out across the George Washington Bridge in cloudy, somewhat muggy weather, passing through the busy small town of Piermont and up into the hills. Here's a glimpse of the river from the car along the way--no time for the grand view!

Cousin Gary kept us busy along the way with family history: he and Ellie, it seemed, had never actually met, but Gary had known Ellie's father and her uncle, and the two of them shared common memories of numerous other family members and friends.

Up in the hills, we arrived in the driveway of a lovely country house, shaded by trees and surrounded by koi ponds and a terraced garden with a chicken coop. Here we were greeted by Gary's wife, Debbie, and soon by their sons Adam and Jase, and Jase's lovely family--his wife Caroline and their two children, the very bright eight-year old, Emma and the six-month old Jack. A great family, all lively, all creative. Jase's band, Glint, managed by his brother, has been touring internationally and is now producing a (third?) CD. We sat for a while in the living room, enjoying the tidbits Debbie had prepared. Then took the ritual family pictures...

... and left in a caravan of two cars for lunch at Baumgart's, in neighboring Englewood, New Jersey--a traditional, family friendly diner that now serves, among other things, an excellent Chinese menu.

We had intended to return to the city in time to stop at the Guggenheim Museum, but were so engaged with the family that the time slipped past without our noticing. Gary and Debbie drove us back into town, and we took advantage of the few minutes to spare before our dinner date to put our feet up and catch our breath. Then, at six, we walked across town to Tenth Avenue to meet our Laguna Beach friend Huw at the Cookshop. Great to see him again, and to catch up with his fascinating international business life. Huw is a fellow Buddhist practitioner and a member, now mostly in absence, of our little sangha in Laguna. An excellent dinner made from fresh, local foods, a bottle of fine, crisp Alsatian pinot blanc, and good conversation.

We indulged one final time in a common dish of ice cream, swearing to get back to our good habits on our return home; then took a walk with Huw along the Highline...

with wonderful, intimate rear window views into the apartment buildings along the way, and more distant city prospects. A great way to see New York at night...

and a wonderful way to conclude our visit here. Tomorrow, a car to the airport and the flight back to Los Angeles...

NEW YORK: RAIN

First stop this morning was Madison Square Park, the small park just across from the Flat Iron Building between 23rd and 26th Streets. We here to see the installation of sculptural works by Allison Saar--a friend from Los Angeles who follows in the footsteps--well, her own, really, but I was about to write "of her mother, Betye." We were glad to have stopped by. The installation consists of five works, each in a different location...

... the whole activating the park with the genuine, compassionate humanity of these figurative pieces: they celebrate the rootedness of our species in the earth we inhabit, the love we are capable of sharing, and the deep joys and sorrows of existence. We had missed the opening the previous evening, but were glad to note that other passers-by were sharing our interest, and were busy taking their own pictures. We also noted, as we left the park, the presence of another figure huddled against the rain...

... with a poignant relevance, we thought, to Allison's work.

The light rain that had started while we were in the park turned into a steady soaking and soon a downpour as we walked north on Fifth Avenue. Our intention was first to ride the subway up to the Eighties, take a walk in Central Park, then to wend our way slowly down to the Museum of Modern Art with occasional stops at galleries along the way. Clearly, the heavy rain scotched this plan, so instead we continued, somewhat stubbornly, northward on Fifth, ducking into a hat shop at one point to escape the wet. Big mistake. Well, for the pocketbook, at least. I succumbed to my old taste for hats, seduced by a fine--and not inexpensive--Italian job...

... AND a fisherman's cap, appropriate to the day; and Ellie, not to be outdone, found herself a cute Greta Garbo topper that became her well.

On, then, somewhat the poorer, through sheets of rain, to the Modern, on 53rd Street. The streaming gutters at each crosswalk left us with sodden shoes and socks and, by the time we reached the museum, our trouser legs were also waterlogged. Ellie's waterproof jacket had proved a lot less than waterproof, resulting in the necessity of buying a t-shirt at the gift shop before venturing into the museum. Since it was now already lunch time, we headed first for the cafe for a bowl of hot soup and a salad. Then on, up the escalators...

... to the giant de Kooning show.

What to say? Impossible, of course, in a couple of hours, to take it all in. The artist's massive lifetime production, along with the variety and emotional intensity of his work-and our own fatigue--left us overwhelmed by his creative genius. Of special interest was to note how the work proceeded, not through distinct periods of figurative work and abstraction, but very much as a continuous flow throughout his life. He worked in the space between the two, back and forth, always pushing forward to explore new territory. The controversial late works, whose simplicity some attribute to senility, made perfect sense in the light of this development--the final reduction of his argument to the simplest possible terms.

Exhausted by the time we reached the final galleries, we had nothing left for the rest of the museum.

We debated for a while about the means to return to our inn, but ended up with the same old Shanks's pony, walking down 7th Avenue and through Time Square, window-shopping...

... as we continued on Broadway down to 23rd Street, all through a now less penetrating rainfall.

A nap, a shower, fresh clothes, and we were ready to meet up for dinner with Ellie's nephew, Danny and his fiancee, Rachel. Good food at a local French restaurant, and a long talk to catch up with family and other matters. We got back in good time for a relatively early night and a well-earned sleep!

NEW YORK

A so-so night's sleep, after the long flight from London and the attempt to stay awake for long enough to get to bed at NYC bedtime. We were awake early, and showed up for our B&B breakfast at eight--along with most of our fellow guests, it seemed. We sat with a friendly Flemish family from Belgium, fresh from a trip to the American West. And spent much too long doing futile and frustrating with online connection problems, resolved only later in the day by the hotel management. You may have noticed that the Buddha Diaries entries covering the previous two days were posted late.

Walked across town late morning, for a first stop at the Rubin Museum, with its fantastic collection of art from the Himalayas. An opportunity to renew contact with the Buddha--not to mention the many deities and demons, boddhisatvas and teachers of the Tibetan Buddhist world:

I think I may have mentioned in the past my vague discomfort with religious art removed from its original context and purpose. Once reinstalled in a museum, it becomes nothing more than an object of beauty, lovely to look at but somehow dis-spirited, deprived of some of its inherent power. The feeling returned to me at the Rubin, even as I enjoyed the incredible complexity of these extraordinary objects and the human skill and passion that went into their creation.

We ended up at an Italian restaurant for a decent lunch. From there, we found access to the delightful Highline walk, a beautiful nature stroll through the lower west side of the city following the tracks of what once was an elevated railway...

... above the streets of Chelsea. It was from these lofty heights that I had the bright idea to put Emily, our assistant in Los Angeles, to work online to get the tickets we had failed to get earlier because of our connection problems. We had almost given up on seeing "Warhorse"--though we had been advised everywhere not to miss it--but Emily performed a little long-distance magic and called back to say that tickets would be waiting for us at the box office. Greatly pleased by the news, we left the Highline in the Twenties, descending to street level for an afternoon's romp through some of the major galleries. We found a great deal of all-too familiar stuff. The highlight was unquestionably the installation "Breaking Open the Head"..

... by Mindy Shapero at the Marianne Boesky Gallery--a series of adventurous deconstructions of what's inside the human skull, no only the brain matter but abstractions, as I saw it, of what it fantasizes and how it perceives the world out there.

With the prospect of a late evening at the theater, we returned across town to our inn to rest a while and freshen up before heading for the uptown subway. Getting through the turnstile proved to be more of a challenge than we would have imagined. We have been having difficulty with our swipes--first in London and now here; our cards don't seem to open the gates as every one else's seem to do. However, with some friendly assistance from the locals, we managed to board and even had a personal escort to the Lincoln Center, to be sure we arrived there in good order.

Before the performance, we stopped for dinner at the Bar Boulud...

... and found ourselves sitting next to a nice young couple who were planning to attend the same performance. Noticing a huge crowd gathering across the street in the theater complex, our waitress speculated that Bill Clinton might be showing up for "Warhorse"--a prospect that had us wondering what we'd say to him, if we found him sitting next to us. Or--we began to fantasize ourselves--might it be the Obamas? We had some fun tossing that one around, but it turned out to be no more--nor less--a celebrity than Paul McCartney who had attracted the crowd. And not to see "Warhorse", but to perform himself.

Warhorse, then...

Whatever your may have heard or read about this theatrical event, don't believe it. It wasn't enough. It proved to be an experience unlike any other I have ever had in the theater. The staging is spectacular, the puppetry amazing: the horses don't pretend to actually "look like" horses in the literal sense. They require three people to operate them. But the people simply disappear into the extraordinary horse-ness of the horses; they become characters, yes, but not human characters. Their energy is magnificent. They prance and neigh and whinny, toss their heads in anger and start back in fright. In the stunning battle scenes (this is the First World War, the "war to end all wars,") they are utterly believable. We see the terror of it all through their terrified eyes. They have a nobility that transcends the man-created chaos that surrounds them.

Aside from this remarkable achievement, the story is a compelling one, the actors engage us in their human frailties, the comedy, the pathos and the tragedy of our existence. From our seats in the fourth row (thanks, Emily!) we were almost a part of the action, which reached out often enough into the audience with roaring tanks, explosions everywhere, and horses rearing over our heads from the front of the stage. An amazing experience, and one that we were very glad not to have missed. We negotiated the subway, this time with some success, and returned to our hotel near midnight, totally exhausted--not only by jet-lag from the previous day's flight, but also from the exhilerating experience of "Warhorse."

LEAVING LONDON

Our last full day, Tuesday. We left the flat late morning and made our way down, once again, to Trafalgar Square, where had had arranged to meet our friend—and former brother-in-law—John for lunch at his club on Northumberland Avenue. A grand place, quiet and dignified, reminiscent of earlier days in London before the noise and bustle of the twenty-first century set in. It was a welcome change from the unrelenting shoulder-to-shoulder battle on the streets and in the subways.

A pleasure, too, to reconnect with an old friend, whom we have not seen for quite a number of years. John seemed in good form—just a little older, like the rest of us. We heard about his second home in a small village in Brittany—a place where he spends time much as we do at our Laguna Beach retreat. In the finance industry for many years, he now observes the turmoil from a more comfortable distance, clearly enjoying his retirement and as glowingly proud of his grandson, Hugo, as are the rest of us.

Running out of London time, we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington...

I think I mentioned having bought a copy of Edmund de Waal’s “A Hare With Amber Eyes” after reading bout it shortly before leaving the US in the New York Times. Ellie has been reading it on the trip—along, it seems, with large numbers of the people we meet in England. It’s a family history that traces a collection of Japanese netsuke, written by a contemporary artist whose work, we had discovered, was in a special installation at the V & A.

Once at the museum, we drifted through some rooms devoted to the English aesthetic movement on our way up to the sixth floor, where the ceramic collections are on display—and were amazed at the range and depth of the collection...

... which included, to our delight, a tiny but utterly charming piece from the Chicago-based Teco pottery that we ourselves have collected over the years. Here it is, dwarfed by its neighbor:

I liked this sentiment:

And I liked the intelligence and humor of installing the new alongside the old:

The Edmund de Waal work was installed high up above the rest of the display cases, on a long, red, fully circular shelf around the base of the dome...

All shapes and sizes, the continuous row of stark white porcelain pieces was clearly intended to become an element of the architectural environment, contemporary, abstract, even minimal shapes which at the same time called to mind the figures—cherubs or gargoyles—used in earlier religious architecture to summon the spirits--angels or demons--from the world beyond. A lovely, seemingly modest installation whose presence is nonetheless a powerful and moving one.

From the V & A, we plunged underground again to join the sardine-packed, rush hour crowds on the Piccadilly and Northern lines to return to our temporary abode in Islington.

Took a few minutes to catch our breath and relax a while before heading out to the local pub to enjoy a final dinner there.

Wednesday morning was spent cleaning up a bit—the bathroom and the kitchen particularly—and packing our bags ready for a ten-thirty pick-up for the drive out to Heathrow. Immigration and security were pretty easy at the London end, and we had time to do some duty-free shopping before boarding our JFK-bound flight. Virgin Air, I have to say, was not a patch on New Zealand Air—though, to be fair, we did travel premium economy on the way over. The Virgin aircraft left a lot to be desired, including a hopeless audio-visual system so poor that I had to give up on both of the two movies that I started.

More distressing, though, was the arrival in New York. Unlike Heathrow, the lines at immigration were inexcusably long and slow; and worse, the video display units, tuned to CNN, were showing reports of an execution planned in Georgia despite world-wide protests from prominent leaders from the Pope on down; and another touting the results of a poll showing Sarah Palin trailing President Obama by only five points, despite the fact that she’s not even running. Welcome home.

A slow ride into New York City, again through rush-hour traffic, to our new temporary home, The Inn on 23^rd Street. A very comfortable room, a fine shower. We tend to forget the conveniences that make our lives so easy… Is this was makes our country great? (Just kidding. A bit.) After unpacking and taking a quick shower to freshen up from the long journey, we walked the few blocks down to Eatalty, a favorite spot at the corner of 6^th Avenue, and waited only a short while for a table—and an excellent meal, accompanied by a glass of Chianti Classico. How we suffer! Back in the hotel around nine o’clock (2AM English time), and kept ourselves awake a while longer watching an episode of “Foyle’s War.” Which took us right back to the UK.