"God for Harry...

... England, and St. George!" Shakespeare's blood-summoning rallying-cry from his famous depiction of the start of the Battle of Agincourt comes to mind as we hear about our present-day Harry warrioring over there in Afghanistan. To judge from television interviews, he seems like a very decent young man in search of not only of adventure, but also some measure of independence, some sense of himself independent of the heritage of his birth. It must be a weight to have to carry around, along with all the exposure to the public that goes along with it.

I have not explored the political blogs, but I imagine there must be considerable backlash against The Drudge Report for outing Harry. It seems like an ungallant thing to have done, when the young man himself was exhibiting a gallantry of his own. Clearly, the revelation has put both him and his comrades at risk, setting him up as a juicy target for the Taliban, and this morning I hear that he will likely be withdrawn from the fighting lines at the front. More's the pity, if only in the sense that his presence there put the families of our American rich and powerful to shame. There are many things that I have admired about John McCain, and one of them is that he stands apart from virtually every other member of Congress in this respect, allowing his own family to stand in harm's way, as he himself did in his younger years.

(That said, let me quickly add that I oppose everything McCain proposes in the way of policies for the future; and that I note, sadly, that he has turned away from his purported principles on many important issues--even torture.)

Back to Harry and Afghanistan. Obama's right. It's here that the "war on terrorism" should have been pursued from its earliest days. The reported resurgence of the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies is a frightening reminder that we are very far from winning what, as it's currently conceived, is an unwinnable war. I heard on at least one report that they have regained a full one-tenth of the territory which they once ruled--thanks to our intervention in their struggle with the Soviet Union--with ruthless barbarity and medieval religious fervor.

And once again, I find myself in a distressing moral landscape. I despise war and violence, I despise the imposition of one person's will upon another, one country's will upon another; and yet when I see oppression of the kind once exercised by the Taliban against their own people, when I see the threat of ethnic cleansing and genocide, I find myself unable to embrace the full meaning of pacifism. I have to concede in such cases that armed intervention can become the desirable option.

As a recovering Brit, I take note of some silly remnant of national pride in that our prince Hal is fighting the right war. Even though I can't believe that "God" is for anyone, even Harry, England, and St. George, something in me admires the warrior in him. I could wish his warriorship might be manifest in actions other than the old-world, violent kind; but along with many others, I suspect, I am frankly pissed at Drudge for interposing what I judge to be his own self-importance into matters more weighty than his trivial report.

Slightly confused Metta to all this Friday! May we all find true happiness and peace in our lives.

This England….

I’ve been thinking a bit more about my brief, weekend visit to England, the country of my birth. Forget the stereotypes: I ate well, everyone I met was warm and friendly to a fault, and the sun shone happily throughout my visit—though I’ll admit I brought that with me from California.

As those who have been following The Buddha Diaries know, I was in the Cotswolds—ferried there from Heathrow on my arrival by my sister and her generous friend, and returning to the airport four days later on the early morning bus from Cirencester—and saw nothing but this small corner of the country with its rolling hills and its villages of beautiful stone cottages whose exterior, at least, has nobly withstood the test of centuries. Not having been in England in the winter time for many years, I was struck by the pervasive silvery pallor of the light, and by the still green hills contrasting with the wonderful, intricately skeletal outlines of the trees and the pale blue of the sky. Early morning, there was frost on the ground. And everywhere, the birds sang.

How much of this I have in the bloodstream and the long, often all too narrow avenues of memory! The countryside sang to me, like the birds, and its song plucked at responsive chords somewhere deep within—call it heart, call it soul, call it consciousness… And I realized that in America I do live the life of an exile. I have made my life in this adopted country for now nearly half a century, and am grateful for all the fulfillment those forty-plus years have brought my way. And yet… I recognize that I am at heart an exile.

With the current election campaign so much in my thoughts before I left—I flew out on the Wednesday following “Super Tuesday”—I had been hoping to get some perspective on America from across the pond. As it turned out, however, I heard barely a word about Obama, Clinton, McCain or Huckabee, and the enquiries I had planned to make seemed somehow, well… irrelevant. No question but that my former fellow-countrymen—those who ventured any opinion at all—are looking forward to the exeunt omnia of Bush and his gang who couldn’t shoot straight, and to the return of America to the community of nations. But they have, as they say, their own fish to fry. The newspapers I saw, and the television new reports, paid scant attention to the American presidential election. Of far greater interest and concern was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s quickly infamous gaffe about sharia law.

There is a civility, I think, still evident in English life. And by that I mean not just good manners, that dreaded “politeness” that threatens to stifle the kind of intimacy we value—perhaps over-value—this side of the Atlantic. I mean a sense of civic responsibility, a respect for others that is in some way structured into the history and the social life of the country. It’s the kind of civility that takes, for example, universal health care (socialized medicine!) as a given; that provides non-grudging care for the elderly and the destitute and schools for the young and transportation systems that make it relatively easy to get around; that recognizes the importance of a cultural life. All those things, in a word, that we “taxpayers” here in America fight so hard to avoid having to pay for with “our money.”

And of course things are not perfect over there. Of course there are those who get left behind, there are the horror stories about those who slip between the interstices of the safety net. But there is nonetheless a general understanding, I think, and a general consensus that any human society is a complex, constantly changing organism, and that each part of it must bear a certain responsibility for carrying its fair share of the common load.

Such are the thoughts, anyway, that I brought back with me from my lightning visit “home.” I could, of course, be perversely mistaken. I could be immersing myself in a romantic nostalgia for a place that never really was. But I like to think I wasn’t.

A Walk in the Country

Sunday morning, my sister and I took a long walk out into the country, starting from her house. Another beautiful day. Having started out in the cold with my winter voat, I gradually had to shed and carry as the day warmed up. Here's some of our route:







And on the return from our furthest point out, we took the mile-long avenue leading back into the town:






On our return, we stopped to buy a newspaper at W.H.Smith (I noted that he used to have "& Sons") and enjoy a cop of coffee with one of those Garibaldi cookies we used to call, as children, "squashed flies"--because of the dark raisins squashed inside. Then home for a quiet afternoon, a cup of tea, and time to pack before leftover Indian dinner on trays in front of the TV, to watch the BAFTA Awards show (the British version of the Oscars.)

A rather easy journey home, with a very early (5:55AM) start at the bus stop, and a long coach ride through frosty fields and hillsides with a low mist hugging the ground and the icy pools along the way. Heathrow was busy, but I managed a bit of duty-free shopping (a handful of cigars for my Sunday afternoons, a cashmere scarf from Harrods for Ellie) and a good English breakfast. And finally the long flight over the Atlantic and the frozen tundras of northern Canada, with Ellie to greet me at the airport.

The freeways of Los Angeles, I have to say, seemed a very long way from the Cotswolds!

Cirencester (cont'd)

The good citizens of Cirencester had reason to be grateful to me, yesterday, for having brought with me another day of California sunshine. It was a truly gorgeous day, barely a cloud to be seen. But quite nippy, as we say hereabouts.

We started out taking Hugo to his drama class. Here's Hugo:



He's an actor:



No kidding. He performed a couple of pieces for us on my first night in town--including a tricky Shakespeare piece--and there's not doubt about the talent. And even though he's only ten, there's not doubt about the intention and the real dedication. And this is not just grand-avuncular pride! He's off to London today, auditioning for a rare place in a dedicated drama school. Wish him luck!

Then on to the Brewery Arts building, just re-opening after a major remodel with a fine show of Midland crafts and a good number of artists' studios. We paused for coffee at the new restaurant, where the staff were obviously green and underprepared for the large numbers of people who showd up for the occasion. But we managed to accept the delays with relative good nature, and enjoyed a good talk with Charlotte and Richard as we waited.

A pleasant lunch at home, then off to a wonderful farmer's market, just outside of town, where they sell all kinds of home-grown, organic goods--including homegrown lamb and pork from the farm--along with a wide variety of other organic groceries and household wares.

Here's my sister, Flora, by the way:



Good-looking family, no?

Back in town, we took a brief rest before returning for a stroll around the still-crowded shopping streets, stopping here and there for a visit with one of Flora's many friends. Followed by a quiet evening at home, with a delicious take-out Indian meal and an hour of entertaining British TV.

Flora's Birthday

What a wonderful day in the Cotswolds, startimg out with the cold grey-silver light of the English winter, and leading to an afternoon of bright, cool sunshine. Could not have wished for better weather, despite the low temperature--well, low for a Californian. But then it has been unusually cool in California of late.

Hugo had spent the night at his grandmother's, so the first thing--after a good bowl of porridge (with fresh, raw ginger--a surprise! Something I should add to my repertoire!)--was to get him off to school. He chose recently to switch from the big school in town to a local village school way out in the country, in a tiny place called Sapperton. Here are Flora and Hugo on the way to school...



and here is Sapperton, nestled in a lovely valley...



After dropping Hugo off at school, we stopped by the local church, where we admired the wood work of the pews...



and the lichen and snowdrops outside...



... then took a fortuitous wrong turn and drove back through more lovely countryside...



... to Cirencester.

I spent a little while trying to get used to Flora's PC, to get the blog posted and download some pictures, and was rescued with the latter task by Charlotte's (Flora's daughter, Hugo's mother)friend Richard. I can now, as you see, post some pictures with my narrative.

Late morning, Flora and I walked into the town center,




where she did some shopping at the market while I investigated the local antiques fair (sorry, Ellie, nothing caught my eye!) Time for coffee, then. We found a pleasant coffee shop and were surprised, while enjoying our warm drinks and a shared slice of chocolate chip cake, to find Charlotte and Richard peering in through the window next to us. They are researching coffee prices for the arts center, due to open Saturday, so we went on with them to yet another coffee stop



before heading home for a light lunch or soup and cheese. In the afternoon, Flora drove me out to the countryside again for a truly wonderful tour of some Cotswold villages that I'd never visited before, off the beaten tourist track, without the usual ice cream and souvenir shops. Here's some views...








Lovely villages with lovely names... Winstone, Duntisbourne Abbots, Middle Duntisbourne, Duntisbourne Rouse, Elkstone. And lovely churches, some dating from Saxon times, others Norman and Gothic, amazing, beautiful testimony to the history of this part of the world. Here are some of them...










Oh, here's one where Charles was there before us. Prince Charles, that is...



And back to Cirencester through these gorgeous lanes...





That's all I have time for at the moment. We went out for a birthday dinner at a Chinese restaurant with the improbable name of Mayflower, where we ate well and enjoyed a very pleasant bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. You'll be relieved to hear that I forgot my camera. Collapsed on the soaf before ten o'clock, and went up to bed shortly thereafter.

In Cirencester

Well, here I am, waking up at five in the morning at my sister Flora's house in Cirencester, England. It never fails to seem somewhat miraculous to me, to start in one part of the globe one morning and wake up thousands of miles elsewhere the next. It's a small planet, these days, and increasingly fragile, as we all now know. Cna't help wondering, can you, how much your jaunt across the globe contributed to its pollution.

But this time it was worth it. Today is my sister's birthday--an occasion we have not celebrated together since we were very small children. Flora was always away at school for her birthday after those first few birthdays, and boarding school lasted for both of us until we were eighteen, when we started to go our separate ways. It does feel like a sad reflection on the way we were brought up, brother and sister scarcely knowing each other because our parents deemed that kind of education (I think we both thought of it as torture) to be more important than our family life. We came together three times a year: two weeks at Christmas, two weeks at Easter, and a month in August. That was it. Then Flora, one and a half years my senior, went off to Africa for a while, and took a job on the high seas, traveling on the Queen Mary and other cunard liners to New York and back... then lived in London; all while I was at Cambridge, and soon after off to Germany, first, then over the Atlantic, where I have spent all my years since my early twenties.

So there has not been much brother and sister time, and now that we're getting on (just a bit) in years, it seemed like the best gift I could give us both was a few short days together. The flight was relatively easy. I had managed to upgrade my ticket to business class, which made it that much easier. The bigger seats made it it possible to grab at least a couple of hours of slumber--though I was annoyed that, having specifically requested and in fact booked an aisle seat, I had been moved to the window--making it virtually impossible to get out to the "lavatory," as they like to call it, or to stretch one's legs. It was also a good decision to carry on my bag: getting through immigration and customs was that much easier, ahead of the crowd.

Flora picked me up at Heathrow with her friend, Marigold, who graciously drove us back to Cirencester from the airport. Very easy, very comfortable. And Flora had cooked up a wonderful, warming soup for lunch, along with a bite of cheese. After a quick nap, I felt refreshed and ready to go when my ten-year-old great-nephew Hugo (have I got that right, my sister's daughter's son?) arrived, and we ventured out into the town to buy shoes (for Hugo) before wandering on, he and I, to a bookshop, where I wanted to catch up with my delinquent gift-giving (he found three books by authors who arrived long after my departure from these hallowed shores.) And on, we guys, leaving my sister behind, to Boots to find some corn plasters (for me) and a coffee shop, where we indulged in a hot chocolate (Hugo) and a cup of English tea (me) and a very sweet hour of guy talk.

Dinner at home, at Flora's--a delicious lamb roast with various mashed potatoes, vegetables and mint sauce, with a nice bottle of Beaujolais, and for dessert, delicious pears prepared with wine, ginger, and citrus zest. After which I pretty much collapsed and went to sleep three times in front of the TV before having the good sense to get myself up to bed.

Skinheads

Salomon Huerta, Untitled

Interesting, isn't it, that the shaved head should have come to be in such vogue as a statement about personal freedom and power? Back in the sixties, it was... hair. Remember? An abundance of it. A strange reversal, specific to our times, perhaps, because hair has been associated with power throughout the ages. Just think of Samson and Delilah. I'm waiting for the Broadway musical, "Bald." Interesting, too, that the shaved head should find practitioners at both ends of the social spectrum, the saints and the reprobates, the monks and the skinheads. Which begs the question as to whether its popularity is any way associated with the popularization of Buddhism. Clearly, in both cases, cutting off one's hair is an act of renunciation of material and social values, as well as a powerful visual statement about identity. For a monk, I suppose, it's a positive act of liberation; for skinheads, we tend to read the same statement as angry and aggressive.

We have talked before, in The Buddha Diaries, about the phenomenon of tattoos in this same context. The two come together in a gripping movie that we watched last night, "This Is England." It's about the bonding of young males, about bullying and fierce tenderness, about the grief and deprivation and despair that contribute to acts of violence and retribution. It's about the fears and fury of young men when their masculinity is threatened, about rivalry and racism. While it's set in contemporary England, it could just have well been set in the United States.

Shades of "A Clockwork Orange"--that terrible, compelling story about the adolescent male ego gone amok. But here the alienation is of a different, less glaringly surreal, more socially realistic kind.


Shaun is a twelve year old whose father has just been killed in Margaret Thatcher's senseless invasion of the Falkland Islands. He is adopted as a kind of gusty little mascot, first by a relatively harmless gang of hooligans, then by a seriously sociopathic hoodlum recently released from jail and bent on taking his revenge on society with a gang of demented skinheads. Drummed into a racist frenzy by an England-first ideologue, they wreak havoc with their anti-Pakistani agenda, and little Shaun learns to his cost about the consequences of rage and hatred.

For those who choose to avoid movies that show violence, it should be noted that there is one scene in this film where rage explodes into explicit, momentarily uncontrolled brutality. Generally, though, we are shown the damage wrought by rage and hatred on the human psyche, less so on the human body. Violence is below the surface, omnipresent, threatening, but expressed more in language and attitude than in blood and gore. I kept thinking about this country, about Minutemen, about the shameless exploitation of the immigration issue by Republican demagogues in the presidential campaign, about not so deeply buried racial fears and hatreds, about not so deeply buried rage... "This Is England" is as much about America as it is about the country of my birth, as much about the growing global problems of population growth, wealth and resource distribution, climate change, and consequent migration patterns as it is about Merrie Olde... A disturbing, thought-provoking piece of work, and easily accessible thanks to Netflix.

Teaching

This morning we leave early to head back down south. For the next couple of days I will be doing my twice-yearly teaching gig. For more than ten years now I have been invited to teach in a class at Cal State Fullerton called “Character and Conflict.” It’s the kind of class I wish I might have taken as an undergraduate student, back in the 1950s—though this kind of class, this kind of self-examination was virtually unheard of back then, particularly in England; it would have been an unwelcome addition to a university curriculum. From what I understand, it can still prove controversial. Best described, perhaps, as an introduction to the understanding of the self as an integrated whole, it challenges students to look into themselves and their relationships—with friends, with families, with life partners—and to find ways to heal those areas that may be broken. It treats such matters as pain, grief and anger seriously, as they deserve to be treated, and invites them to be brought out into the open rather than repressed, allowed to fester, and destroy lives.

When I say I wish I might have taken it, it’s because it took me decades to learn what these—mostly young—people learn in this one class in the course of a semester: that the integrated life is not lived in the head alone, but also in the heart and soul. For too many years, I remained closed to the possibility that I had either one of these, and it took a serious crisis in my family life to pull me up short and re-examine my assumptions. It took some serious work with other men who shared the same predicament to come to understand that we had an emotional life whether we paid attention to it or not; that we had a heart, and that its proper functioning was vital to our health—not to mention the health of our families.

And having rejected the notion that I had a soul after years at Anglican Christian schools and a home life presided over by an Anglican minister father, it took an initial brush with Buddhism to bring me around to the understanding that the spiritual life was also a part of that integrated whole; that without it I was something of a human cripple. I am grateful, now, that I was introduced to Buddhism more than ten years ago, and my life would be poor indeed without this spiritual dimension.

When I tell people that I will be teaching, the first question is almost always, What to you teach? My glib answer it, Myself. Which in a sense is true. I just go in there with a class of forty or so students and try to be as much myself as I can be. I tell them the story of my book, “While I Am Not Afraid’”—which most of them will have read by the time I make my appearance in their classroom—a book which follows me along the path described above, the path into the heart and, further, into the soul; and I try to answer any questions they have with all the honesty I can muster. It’s about the importance of not holding oneself back, of not hiding the feelings behind an armored chest, of speaking one’s truth.

I spent many years of my life as a teacher and, sadly for myself, I saw it mostly as a burden, something that had to be done in order to earn a living. One of the things I have learned from Buddhism is the importance of teaching and the vital role of the teacher. And one thing I have learned from life is that teaching is not about having some special knowledge and passing it on; it's about showing others who you are and what you believe and inviting them to share in it if they will. It’s a privilege to be invited to participate in the process of this class and, sometimes, I hope, to touch lives in the same way mine has been touched by those in my life who have truly taught me. It does mean, though, that my time is limited for the next couple of days, so don’t be surprised if you find me slacking off in The Buddha Diaries. Blessings all around….

Le Tour

Okay. Today a change of pace. Time for some fun. Readers of The Bush Diaries--the blog that morphed a few months ago into The Buddha Diaries--may remember my curious passion for the Tour de France, the mother of all bicycle races. I caught the bug as a teenager, when I had my own red racing bike, which I rode somewhat klutzily around the Sussex downs. To feel the rush of wind through my hair and around my body was an escape from the confines and the miseries of boarding school, a kind of ritual cleansing in the salt air along the tidal river in the valley. Being a somewhat unaccomplished mechanic, though, I suffered through countless breakdowns and tanglings of the Benelux derailer gears, and remember often sitting by the roadside fixing flat tires and adjusting worn cotter pins...

Ah, youth! Anyway, back then the only way to follow the Tour was to read the French newsapapers. My favorite was Le Firgaro. And my heroes were the like of Francois Coppi, the great champion of his day--this was the 1950s, friends, a good while ago. I confess that I abandoned the Tour for much of my adult life, and was drawn back by the victories of an American, Greg Lemond, followed by the spectacular feats of his successor, Lance Armstrong. In my younger day, the prospect of an American winner of the Tour would have been unthinkable. But, as the saying goes, times change.

Despite the doping scandal--and a huge disappointment last year with the controversy that threatened to deprive Floyd Landis, the putative winner, of his title--I have tuned again this year. The giants from recent years have mostly been eliminated from the cast of characters, either by age and fatigue or by association with doping investigations. But some of them pedal on, as furiously as ever; and there are new faces to watch. I'm grateful for daily coverage by Versus, with its great team of reporters and commentators, a couple of whom have sweated through the gruelling Tour more than once themselves. Their commentary is articulate, leavened with intelligent and entertaining humor--the droll Bob Roll can be allowed his admittedly generous share of corn--and remarkably well-informed. And the countryside through which the riders pass is a reminder of the joys of European landscape and the magnificent architecture of buildings great and homely. This year's start in London and progress through the county of Kent to Canterbury was a symphony of green hills and forests, with the occasional reminder, in a church or country manor, of the centuries of history still alive in English life.

And then there's the excitement of the race. I guess it takes a bit of a fanatic to sit through those hours of watching the patient "peloton"--the main group of a hundred or more riders--sweeping along behind a small breakout group and waiting for the right moment to catch up with them: it's a dramatic moment when they do, swallowing up those few brave souls who sped out ahead like a whale ingesting a stray mouthful of plankton. The most exciting moments are inevitably the last few minutes of each stage, when the teams' individual expert sprinters vie for the chance to cross the finish line first. These are dangerous moments, too, as witness yesterday's massive pile-up yesterday in Ghent. Battling for position in a swarm of a hundred or more speeding bicycles can easily lead to a slip or a collision that will bring the whole delicate balance crashing down. Fortunately, I believe--I have not yet heard the final tally--while many fell, few were injured in this spectacular crash.

Anyway, just to give neophytes a taste, here's a picture of yesterday's finish line, with two Belgians (in blue jersey's) finishing first and second in their native country--a cause for celebration.



More, I'm sure, as the race progresses over the next three week.

The Malingerer--Part II

I was gratified to hear from my fellow-malingerers yesterday in the "Comments" file. I did actually see the Sopranos' finale--a day late. We missed it Sunday night, having missed the previous two episodes while we were in Europe, so we caught up with our recordings last night, on our return to Los Angeles. Onion rings, eh? Not sure of their therapeutic effect, Anonymous, but I agree that they made a great ending to the series. After all that agony and gore, it was good to end up with a laugh of relief and dismissal. Garlic, Carly, yes, I know of its health benefits.

But back to our sheep. I was tickled to hear from Quink, whose website I quickly surfed to--a satirical take on the British boarding school and a gathering place for some of its victims. Skimming through the site, I found a quote from the novelist Evelyn Waugh, a product of my own alma mater, Lancing College. He had as little love for his experience there as I for mine. In my last year at Lancing, my co-editor on the school literary magazine had the cheek to write to the by-then eminent Waugh, requesting a submission for our journal. Waugh responded--but dismissively: all he had ever learned at Lancing, he wrote (and I paraphrase here: this was many years ago,) was how to avoid hard work. My friend wrote back to ask permission to publish the response, and to ask if Waugh could give his assurance that he would never write for our distinguished magazine, to spare future editors the trouble of writing to him. He received a postcard in response (and this I remember word-for-word): "Yes to both questions, E.W."

Here's some of what Waugh had to say about the boarding school experience: "Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums ... who find prison so soul-destroying." (Decline and Fall). And "Our form-master is one Woodard, a new parson who, people say, is related to the misguided old gentleman who founded us. He seems quite decent but undoubtedly means to make us work - a fad I abhor in masters." Waugh's acerbic wit was surely honed on the miseries of the public school experience.

Anyway, thanks to Quink for putting me back in touch with that world. I wonder if he ever came across an organization called Boarding School Survivors? I came across this support group for those living with the wounds of boarding schools back in the early 1990s, when I had begun to do some men's work over here wih The Mankind Project here in the U.S. Satire is one way to salve the wounds; some form of psychological/emotional therapy is another, for those who are beyond finding it funny. I happen to like both approaches. "Quink"? That must be the dreadful blue or purple Parker's liquid I used to get all over my little fingers as I struggled for mastery of the pen and nib at prep school.

I never suffered the kind of abuse that Dr. Steve describes in his comment. I was ritually strapped and caned, but ony because that was the accepted form of punishment in the ethos of the private school in those days. I was also buggered by a dirty old math teacher at the age of twelve--a not uncommon experience, often overlooked if not exactly condoned by that same ethos. And my natural teenage appetites for sexual exploration were all satisfied with boys: there was no one else around to play with--or to fall in love with. The first time I fell in love with a girl was the actual, very same day that I left Lancing, when my parents arrived to drive me off with a French girl in tow--an exchange student who had come to spend a month with them. Her name was Jeannine, and I fell in love with her instantly.

So much "stuff", eh? All grist for the mill of learning to understand myself, and learning to see what still stands in the way of the spiritual liberation that is the quest of my life. Another word about Dr. Steve: readers may recall that I spent a couple of hours in his office in the weeks before I left for Europe, and found him to be a healer of the very first order, keen of hearing and sensitive of touch, and one who combines insight with a true feel for the body's energies. A man, then, who--as he suggests in his comment yesterday--has learned to listen to the powerful voice of the body-mind, and who has transformed the experience of those abusive wounds into the remarkable ability to heal.

Six AM, Again...

... this time, Pacific Daylight Savings Time. I'm back at my study desk in Los Angeles, overlooking that familiar view of our back yard and, beyond, of Hollywood. The fountain is gurgling its familiar tune, the birds are singing. Home. It's at once a strange and a welcome feeling, after a good while away: so this is where I live, when I'm at home. It doesn't yet seem quite real, and my mind is having a hard time adjusting.

But first--and this is perhaps why--I need to get back to the last day of our European trip, Tuesday, Greenwich Mean Time. The grandchildren were back at school,



and Matthew was able to take a day out of his busy work schedule to join us for a day in town. London, that is. I used to know it well, but it has changed a lot since the years I lived there, in the late 1950s. These days, if you want to understand the meaning of the word "cosmopolitan," London is the place to be. It teems with every human race and every human language. Back then, in my young, post-Cambridge days, you could still feel something of the insularity of England, even in its capital.

Expensive! Unbelievable! Now that the dollar is worth a scant half of a pound sterling, you double the price of everything to come up with its dollar equivalent--and the prices themselves look the same. Ten pounds--twenty dollars--for a lunch is barely adequate. Ah, well, no point in dwelling on the obvious. Everywhere in Europe seemed expensive. And to think there was a day when Americans crossed the Atlantic for a cheap vacation!

London. With Ellie's cold and the prospect of a long day's travel ahead of us, we decided on a leisurely day, with just a couple of easy destinations. We took a morning express train from Harpenden, and were in London within half an hour. Then on by the still-easy and convenient "tube" to South Kensington station, whence we walked the few blocks up through the museum area to Hyde Park.




Still green, still filled with magnificent trees, still serene despite the traffic.

Our destination was the Serpentine Gallery, where we have seen interesing work before, and we were not disappointed by the current exhibit of Paul Chan--an unusual and effective use of the medium of video. Chan projects his images from above onto the floor or a tabletop, where they end up looking more like moving silhouettes rather than the familiar video images. The overall impression is of things falling--leaves, chairs, motor cars, kitchen appliances, cell phones, everything imaginable... and people. Human shapes, some almost too tiny to be recognized at first, others larger, falling across the surface of the floor. My eye kept watching for their appearance at the edges and following their drift, even as my mind was drawn irresistibly to that dreaful day at the World Trade Center in New York. Mixed in among all the other falling objects, the human shapes took on a sudden, almost tragic poignancy each time they appeared. Reflections about time, the unending passage of time, the equivalence of all things, including ourselves, their disappearance beyond the edges of our consciousness...

We walked back through the park and admired the renovations to the Albert Memorial--Victoria's inordinately grand tribute to her lost love--and past Kensington Palace,



the erstwhile home of the ill-fated Diana, still much in the news because of the NBC broadcast of images of the accident in which she died. A great debate in England at the current moment: her death can still cause controversy. Hoping for a good pub lunch, we stopped off at a pub--the wrong one, it turned out, for a good pub lunch--and had a beer there before finding a small Italian restuarant on a side street that offered a better menu.

After lunch, we wandered on through the back streets of Kensington toward the museum. It's an attractive area, with grand squares, elegant mansions and tiny mews--the old stables turned in post-carriage days into small but appealing--and highly "desirable"--living quarters.



By the time we reached the South Ken underground station again, there was time only for a quick stop at the Victoria and Albert Museum gift shop, then back to the tube and a train from Kings Cross back to Harpenden. We had wanted to get back in time to pack, because we'd need to leave early for our flight from Heathrow.

A leisurely last dinner with Matthew and Diane



at a local, very fine restaurant, and time for a good talk and promises of a return visit with the family as soon we we could all manage it. Five thousand miles is too great a separation for grandparents from their growing grandchildren...

As for the flight, well, it was uneventful. Enough said. More later, when I get myself back onto Pacific time.

A Family Day

A day with the family at home in Harpenden. Breakfast. Inflatable pool for the kids.





Lunch. A walk in the country.



Dinner. Pleasure. Exhuastion!