Saying Goodbye...

This is not a day I have been looking forward to. Later this morning, we have to say goodbye to George...


... and leave him in Laguna with his caretaker, Lisa, and her dog Chazzie, his chum, while we head north to Los Angeles to pack and get ready for our long European journey. It is not easy to say goodbye to George. He is such a dependent, loving, trusting little cuss, and an important part of our lives. We get very much attached to these animals who entrust us with their lives and offer us in return their extraordinary loyalty, their companionship, and their love.

Harder still, perhaps, to say goodbye to George because I find it harder than ever, these days, to leave at all. I'm also very much attached to my routine and it gets no easier, with age, to change it. The discomforts and perils of travel are bad enough in themselves, but I have grown exceedingly (too?) comfortable with the way I live my life here at home. In concert with Ellie, I have designed it and worked for it in accordance with my desires and needs. The familiarity of our daily life brings with it a kind of ease that is hard to sacrifice, even for the more exotic pleasures of travel.

Still, we are committed, the airplane tickets purchased, the visa (for Russia) stamped inside our passports, the hotel reservations made and the deposits paid. We leave tomorrow morning, and will be back around June 10. My posts in The Buddha Diaries, assuming I can make the time to write, given a busy travel schedule and assuming that internet connection is inexpensively available at most destinations these days, will follow our journey, first to England for a couple of days, then on to Finland and Russia for a ten-day tour before returning to England for another week with family.

I hope you'll join me on the trip. I won't be reading elsewhere as assiduously as I usually do, and will miss the daily adventure of that invitation into other people's joys and tribulations here in the blogosphere. But it would drive me crazy to attempt to check in with everyone AND keep up with the travel schedule AND post my own adventures, so I'm choosing to make that determination in advance. And if my own entries are sporadic, well, so be it. The one thing I don't need to pile on to everything else involved in going away is that absurd, sometimes obsessive sense of obligation to my writing. Let it be a good exercise in learning to let go.

May we all find true happiness in our lives...

A Pleasant Evening; and a Strange Night

We enjoyed a wonderfully pleasant evening yesterday, driving down with our friends Brian and Mary to the village for dinner, indulging (myself and Brian) in the luxury of a martini as well as a glass of wine with dinner and returning, as the heat of the day waned, to the patio behind our cottage for a cigar (myself and Brian) and a glass of Grand Marnier.  Good conversation, relaxed company, a beautiful evening, what could be better?

And then this strange night: I woke up from a dream in which I was attending some art event as an invited panelist, with my usual fears of appearing in public and trying to look intelligent and well-informed.  Ellie, not on the panel but sitting close, started finding fault with me in a very public way, much to my annoyance, beginning with a complaint about  my cigar.  The panel discussion had not yet begun, and she complained that I had taken off my nice brown cashmere jacket (which I do not possess) and rolled up the sleeves of my pink shirt less tidily than she would have wanted.  Meanwhile, talk of my cigar persisted until I tried quelling the talk with a loud "Enough about me!"--to which no-one paid the slightest attention.  Then Ellie piped up with the observation that she was surprised by my use of the word "cigar", knowing me for a plain-spoken man who eschews circumlocution and everyone knew that "cigar" actually meant "penis."  At which I recall exclaiming that this was too embarrassing, and I promptly woke.

On waking, I stumbled blearily to the bathroom for an early morning pit stop and, feeling somewhat dry in the mouth--thanks, no doubt, to the martini, the wine and the Grand Marnier--fumbled under the sink for my white plastic bottle of Biotene mouthwash.  I had taken a big swallow from the bottle and was about to gargle when I realized something was seriously amiss.  I checked the bottle in the dim light and realized that instead of the mouthwash I had picked out a similar container of Eucerin moisturizing cream.  So much for early morning bleariness...

Which reminds me that we had a terrible night a couple of days ago with George the dog wakeful, watchful and restless for the entire night.  I had just been reading in the New York Times about the China earthquake and the strange behavior of the pandas shortly before the quake hit, so I had earthquakes on the mind and of course we are long overdue, here in Southern California, for another "event"... So I was convinced that George's weird behavior heralded some imminent disaster and lay awake for hours making plans for our escape and eventual survival.  In the morning, though, on awakening, I noticed that the covered plastic cup where we keep George's late night snack had remained unopened: the poor dog had been deprived of his habitual bedtime treat.  He could hardly have made his point more eloquently if he'd had the power of speech.

This morning, I woke again at ten past six and slipped out to the garden for a lengthy sit.  A truly lovely meditation, accompanied by the songs of countless birds.

Forgive all this personal stuff for a Sunday entry.  You didn't have to read it.  If you did, my thanks for your tolerance.  And blessings all around...  

Under Attack!

It was a trivial incident, really. Insignificant in the grand scale of things. I had just left the front door of our house, about ten o'clock at night, taking George the dog out for his last pee walk before bedtime. We live on a blind bend in the hills, a very narrow street, made more narrow by the customary row of parked cars, and I heard the aggressive roar of the engine before I saw its source--a large black SUV, taking the bend at inordinate speed. Caught in the headlights, I shook my head in a clear--but quiet, I thought, and non-threatening--sign of disapproval of the speed at which the vehicle was traveling. And was rewarded for my pains by a direct hit from a paper cup filled with ice cubes, hurled at me from the open window of the car as it roared on past.

Trivial, as I say. But I was shocked. The first reaction was a surge of belated fear. This guy--sorry, men, this was masculine driving; my general impression is that women drivers are aggressive in different ways than taking dangerous bends at a high rate of speed--this guy, I thought immediately, would have used a gun on me if he'd had one. Those drive-by shootings are common enough in the city, and surely, some of them, as senselessly provoked. Another surge of anger, easily noted and dismissed. And then sadness, that we humans are reduced to such pitiful instinctive behavior.

So I looked for the gift. I found myself thinking about the driver, the bad karma he must have been carrying with him as he drove, and of which he had certainly just acquired a little bit more. I had learned something from direct experience, I thought, about human nature, the quick resort to violence, the easy release of rising anger through instant action, the gratification of a fragile ego. I thought about that demented teenager in Omaha, Nebraska, who did have a gun available and who used it to devastating effect. The death of those men and women who were the victims of his unprovoked attack is a dreadful reminder of the essentially harmless banality of my own incident, but in principle it was no different. (Is it not disgraceful that we, in this country, apparently still lack the good sense and the will to keep lethal assault weapons out of the hands of even the mentally unstable and the criminally insane?)

And what about myself? Easy to learn about others, less easy to look into oneself and find the teaching there. However minimally, I had my own part in bringing about this explosion of petty rage. What little part of my own ego prompted that message I conveyed, that small, disapproving shake of the head that undoubtedly said: I'm your Daddy, I'm wiser and older than you, I look down upon you from the perch of my righteousness and offer you the benefit of my superior judgment. From a different viewpoint, from the driver's seat, jubilant with my own driving skills and daring, I look out at this judgmental old prick with his stupid little dog and, well... fuck him, right? Who's he to lecture me on my driving?

A trivial incident, yes. And, yes, I was right. The guy was driving like a maniac. His rage was evident in the way that he drove before I provoked it further. I have no need to reproach myself, nor to make the incident bigger than it was. Still, a little something was learned in this very small "gift wrapped in shit."

It's this kind of thing that I'm interested in exploring in "Accidental Dharma," soon to offer space for those teachings that reach us unexpectedly, in small ways--a paper cup, flung out of the darkness on a narrow hillside street--or, sometimes, in truly terrible, life-changing events like those Omaha killings. I'll be asking for stories from anyone who cares to examine the impact of these unanticipated life-lessons on their own consciousness and the way they conduct their lives. I hope that you'll join me. More to come on this topic, next week...

George's Monday

Well, I'm sure that everyone is anxious to hear about George's day at the vet--my having mentioned, yesterday, that he was going in for some minor surgery and a tooth-cleaning. Here's the skinny.

I left him off at the vet's in the early morning, to be sure he'd be first in line. George was puzzled, to say the least, to have gone without his breakfast. He is, as they say, a creature of habit, and is displeased when his habits get interrupted--particularly, I have to say, when those habits have anything to do with food. George is a dog who takes his eating seriously. It was clear to him even as I put him in the car that this was not to be a day like any other day.

He was not especially relieved, I have to add, when he realized where he was when we arrived at the vet's office, but he managed to maintain his dignity (his dognity?) as I led him in and left him with the receptionist. Truth to tell, I was probably a lot more upset than George was, and simply projecting my anxieties onto him. He gave me one last reproachful look as they led him away and I tried to reassure him with familiar words: "Back soon." "Back soon," in fact, can mean anything from an hour at the gym to a couple of weeks in Europe, but I'm assured that dogs have no sense of time, so I trust that I'm forgiven for this small effort to reassure myself, as much as George, that everything will be okay.

We stopped by to pick him up around noon, as we were leaving the beach to return to Los Angeles. The receptionist offered me a bag whose contents were small and bloody. Two of George's teeth, which the vet had had to remove--in case I wanted to put them under his pillow, I suppose, for the tooth fairy. I declined. It appeared, however, from our conversation with Dr. G, that all had gone well. The tooth-cleaning proved to be a challenge: George has the habit of chewing at himself, and his teeth get jammed with little hairs. There was some infection, the doctor had ascertained from blood tests, but the problem was not uncommon for the breed. George, he told us, has a "typical Cavalier's mouth."

There was also that small growth on his hind leg which the doctor had successfully removed, and George now sports a bright orange bandage around the affected area. It can come off, the doctor says, in a couple of days. Otherwise, aside from the jaw-dropping, bank-breaking cost to us, we all came off relatively unscathed. George's body was still coping with a dose of morphine, administered to spare him pain, and he remained a little dopey for the rest of the day. A little distrustful, too, of people who had abandoned him to the tender mercies of that doctor. And a little careful with that leg. He has been jumping up with a little less enthusiasm than is his wont.

His appetite, however, seems to be unaffected. Here he is this morning, bandaged, but still regal. And ready for his breakfast.

A Buddhist Sunday

What a lovely surprise! The old Art Deco nursery clock from the rectory in Aspley Guise, where I spent my earliest days on earth, suddenly awoke after years of refusing stubbornly to work and started ticking away yesterday afternoon on the mantleshelf of our little Laguna Beach cottage, thousands of miles from its original home. Perhaps it was the fire we lit beneath it on the first cool afternoon of the fall--though we have lit fires under it many times before. Perhaps it was the good vibes we brought back with us from our visit to the Metta Forest monastery, whose monks had found refuge from the fires here at the cottage the week before... No matter, it started ticking away madly without its pendulum, which we soon unearthed and replaced, and it has been keeping good time ever since. The sound of its strike, on the half hour and the hour, takes me right back to the nursery. This morning, it timed my meditation sit for me very nicely.

That visit to Metta, then. (Note: I'll be posting photographs of the event later, when I get back to my office. Forgot to bring the connecting cord with me to hook the digital camera up to the laptop.) We made the trip down to the monastery yesterday morning, Sunday, for the annual "Kathina" ceremony--the day on which, traditionally, the lay community gathers at the end of the rainy season (in Thailand, that season ends October/November) to mark the occasion with the gift of material to the monks to make new robes. More broadly--and here in Southern California, where the rains don't usually start before January--it has become a festival to honor the spirit of generosity.

Hundreds of people swarmed to the Metta Forest monastery in Valley Center, where our teacher Thanissaro Bhikkhu serves as the abbot of his band of Thai Forest monks. Ellie and I, along with several members of our sangha, made the long trip down I-5 to Oceanside, then inland through the myriad new suburban communities and into the increasingly remote and lovely hills, and finally through the rich valleys of fruit orchards and up the hillside to where the monastery sits in serene isolation from the world below. From the dusty parking lot, we made the steep climb up through avocado orchards and past the simple huts where the monks live to the splendid little Buddhist temple at the top.



This paradise was already crowded with visitors--mostly Thai. Such friendly, generous people! (Thailandchani--wish you could have been there: you'd have felt right at home!) They brought not only the traditional gift of material for robes, laid out at the temple doors, but other supplies, everything the monks might need from boxes of flashlight batteries to enormous packages of paper towels and toilet paper.



And money. It seemed a little odd to one brought up in the tradition of the discreet passing of a collection box in church to see the money trees in front of the temple, where the faithful came, often with their children, to attach their gifts of cash and stop for a moment of meditation with hands pressed together in respect. The trees were soon blossoming with dozens of fluttering greenbacks, dollar bills, fives, tens, twenties...

Down the road a ways, when we arrived, the monks were already making their alms walk past a long line of food stalls set up by visitors as yet another expression of generosity.





There was Thai food, of course--but also Indian, Korean, Chinese... Our own sangha had brought fruit, all neatly cut and speared on kebob sticks. Than Geoff spotted me in the crowd on the way back up to the temple, where the monks ate, and told me with a big smile how much they had enjoyed our house last week.

After the monks had enjoyed their meal--they are allowed a single meal only, in the morning--there was a half-hour of chanting, with the visitors seated under awnings outside the temple whilst Than Geoff led via PA system from within. Most of the chants were unfamilar, but we were able to join in with the "Sublime Attitudes," familiar from Than Geoff's monthly visits to the Laguna Beach sangha, and it was a delight to sit amongst a crowd of the Thai Buddhist faithful from the communities of Southern California and sense the powerful energy of that wider expatriate community.

Following the chanting, Ellie and I had the opportunity to spend a few minutes with Than Geoff, who told us the story of the fire and their evacuation from the monastery.



Here's Ellie with Than Geoff and behind them, the mountain that burned... Then it was time for us lay people to enjoy the enormous variety of delicious foods at the stalls down the hill from the temple. The lane was crammed with people, but no one seemed deprived: there was more than enough to feed the proverbial army--some of it too hot for Ellie, who likes the spice but not so much the heat. We ate standing, walking--and far too much. I ended up my meal with an Indian pancake smothered with sweetened condensed milk from cans, something I don't remember eating since World War II! All in all, a toothsome indulgence.



Hummers, dozens and dozens of them, outside the temple. A treat to watch them feed. My little digital would only catch a few... But click on the image, anyway, you'll get the idea.

Finally, at noon, there was the ceremony of the presentation of the cloth. The monks gathered again in the temple to decide amongst themselves which one of them had that year earned the privilege of accepting it on behalf of the community--either because his robe was worn out or because of some special merit earned for other reasons. The custom, then, is for the sewing of the robe to begin and, with the help of the community of monks, to be completed before the end of the day. Ellie and I did not wait that long, and headed back down between the avocado groves to the car. A very special occasion.

George the dog was happy to see us on our return, having been left to fend for himself for several hours. This morning, a few minutes from now, I have to take him down to the vet for his tooth-cleaning operation and for the removal of a small growth on one of his hind legs. Poor George! Still, he'll be out of there in time to return with us to Los Angeles this early afternoon.

Ojai: Fun and Fire

Well, it was quite a trip. Here we are, safely back in Los Angeles--thanks, by the way, to those who wished us a safe journey. It actually felt like touch and go at times on the freeway coming home. More of that in a moment. Meanwhile...

We headed up the 5 freeway Saturday morning as far as Magic Mountain (unbelievable queues of vehicles blocking traffic as people lined up to exit the freeway there, to spend a joyful Saturday on the roller coasters and other instruments of torture!) and took the 126 east through Piru and Fillmore to Santa Paula, where we had been urged to stop to see an odd new show opening up in an odd new art space miles from the "art scene" in Los Angeles. The happily-named Kunstbarn--a play, no doubt, on the more august, ubiquitous "Kunsthalle," the venue of much avant-garde art in Germany and elsewhere--turned out to be just that: a barn. But a barn painstakingly converted into a small but pristine gallery space by the owner, Lotar Ziesing, who deals primarily in "Decorative Art and Antiques." His inaugural exhibition was entitled "Dysfunctional American Portraits, 1930-1960."

The dysfunctional portraits in question turned out to be mostly paintings by those anonymous, self-taught painters whose masterpieces you can pick up for a couple of dollars at garage sales and swap meets. If you have a good eye--as Lotar quite evidently does--you can find real gems, of the kind popularized by the artist Jim Shaw in his Thrift Store Paintings. Here's a couple of them, for your delectation: Lotar has graced each one with a title of his own invention. These two are called "Abused Child" and "Illuminated Shopper," respectively. The theme of the dysfunctional family makes an interesting and satrical comment on mostly post-war America and its illusions of domestic bliss.

It's a trek out to Lotar's place, but worth the effort. Lotar himself is a genial man, a generous host, and a source of endless knowledge about all things "mid-century." Parked outside his house when we arrived was a magnificent pillar-box red Lancia from the 1950s--or perhaps the 1960s, I'm no expert--and while we were still there a friend of his drove up with a beautifully restored Airstream-type trailer of the same period (it wasn't Airstream, but I didn't catch the make.) The late 19th century homestead, also restored with a finicky eye for detail, enjoys a spectacular view of the valley below with its wide arroyo and the mountains beyond.

We took the scenic route up over the hill to the outstkirts of Ojai, where our friends Chris and Nancy had generously invited us to spend the night in their guest house. We were greeted by three rowdy dogs, anxious to meet George, the newcomer. George is normally quite nervous around other dogs, and is known to lunge at them in a less than friendly manner. We assume that, being small, he needs to assert his dogulinity. It's a Napoleon thing. However, they all seemed to get along just fine as we settled down to an excellent lunch of home-brewed potato soup and salad. After lunch, the four of us--here are our friends--set out on a marvelous, long walk along a back road that soon led us through avocado and orange orchards, where George for the first time in his life learned the joys of running off-leash in the countryside. His long coat managed to pick up every burr along the way, but it was worth the work of pulling them all out one by one just to watch his doggy spirit run free.

We enjoyed a very pleasant dinner in the town of Ojai, and managed an early night and a good sleep, away from the light and sounds of the metropolitan area. We watched the sunrise on an exquisite morning that was marred only, moments later, by Ellie's accident with a glass tea-caddy--it slipped from her hand and shattered on the tile floor in a million tiny shards. Out with George for his morning poop walk, though, I was at once amazed and thrilled to actually hear the beat of crows' wings as a pair of them flew past. It was that quiet...

Breakfast of coffee and toasted English muffins with our friends on their enclosed back porch, surrounded by whispering trees--the wind had not yet risen to its later gusty strength; and a visit with a next-door neighbor, the artist Michael Dvortcsak, whose paintings we have been familiar with for many years.



Michael loves rough, volumetric shapes like ancient vessels and huge, craggy boulders which occupy his canvases like mythical, paleolithic presences set in dreamscapes of the mind. His studio is a solitary cave, hemmed in on all sides by racks crammed with paintings of all sizes and a single wall on which the works in progress hand are hung, awaiting his attention. It's always great to spend time in an artist's studio, and it was a pleasure to meet the man behind the paintings.

There was another studio visit in store for us. After a brief stop in town at the farmers' market, we headed out into the country in the opposite direction--to the south and west--to find the studios of an old friend, Gary Lang, and his wife, Ruth Pastine. Gary left Los Angeles years ago, in the early 1980s, as I recall, and spent a number of years in the contemporary art mecca of New York. He and Ruth returned to Southern California--and the paradise of the countryside around Ojai--a few years ago, and have built a magnificent his- and hers- studio, with a wing for each of them to work in privacy. In Gary's studio, we found a dozen new paintings in pursuit of his love affair--the word "obsession" came up--with color and movement. At one end, a large painting, similar to this one



(apologies to Gary for having lifted this absurdly too-small image, sans permission, from his gallery's site: it gives no feeling for the scale and grandeur of the actual work!) Where Gary works in wildly colorful, eye-popping abstraction, Ruth works much more subtly with shifting color gradations in canvases where serenity rules. Here's a blue one:



(Apologies to Ruth, too, from pretty much the same reasons!) We spent a good while in the studios, amazed, as always, by the endless inventiveness of artists and their dedication to their work.

We enjoyed a bite to eat at Ruth and Gary's, out on the shaded patio behind their house. It wasn't long, however, before we began to notice smoke in the air and smelled the burning brush--our first inkling of the terrible fires that were breaking out all over Southern California. After leaving their house, we headed into thickening smoke around Ventura, where traffic slowed to a crawl beneath a dirty red, hellish sky. Unsure whether the freeway would lead us, in this murk, to a dead halt between flaming hillsides, we debated leaving the 101 and heading back east on the 126 again. Not knowing which of the two routes was worse, we opted on instinct for the 101. It turned out to have been the better choice, I think, because a call to Lotar gave us notice of a raging fire in the hills above them, near Santa Paula; and later we heard that there were fires on either side of the southbound I-5, which we would have had to take after leaving the 126. Even so, as you can tell from this picture, it was bad enough. We were thankful to find our own area clear when we got home. Today we can look forward to heat--and more brush fires.

Nightmare!

It was one of those dreadful nights you wouldn't wish on anyone. It started out okay. We watched "The History Boys"--one of those Brit schoolboy flicks with a good few laughs along the way and a good few poignant moments as the band of engaging ruffians grow up. We should have quit when that one finished. Instead, we slipped "Zodiac" into the DVD player (we had run out of Netflix, and picked up two movies at the local video store in the afternoon. Mistake.) "Zodiac"--which had great reviews when it came out, remember?--was the interminable story of the attempt to track down the killer of its eponymous title, with more tedious detail than anyone could possibly want to know and, after hours of teasing and hooking the viewer with the promise that one day this monster would be found, concluded with the revelation that he never was. Not really. We had to be satisfied with the exchange of a signifcant stare--indicating, presumably, that this was indeed the guy, though the case was unindictable. Ah, well. Give this one a miss.

And so to bed, much, much later than our usual time. Then the bad part started. I spent half the night, it seemed to me, embroiled in this dreadful dream--that also never ended. Coincidence? I don't know, but it started out with us going to a conference in a strange city in a foreign country--Spain? Mexico? It seemed somehow Latin--and parking the car at the outskirts because, well, you know why: it's impossible to park in the inner city these days, and taking the tram from there. Anyway, the conference was long and deadly dull on a topic that had no conceivable interest to us and it went on and on and when finally it ended we took the tram back to the area where we had parked the car...

... and found ourselves walking along a narrow path behind a crowd of impossibly slow fellow conferees until I gave Ellie the high sign and we managed to jump ahead which was when we suddenly realized that George the dog had been with us all along and had disappeared but then he happily reappeared and went ahead tail wagging for some reason off-leash which worried us of course but we didn't have one to put him on...

... and then we found ourselves in this strange kind of civic building with shopping mall attached and everything was closed and empty and we couldn't find our way out the other end and by this time of course we were totally lost but we finally did see "light at the end of the tunnel" in the form of big glass doors but the only way to reach them was down a steep slope of very fine sand with footprints sinking three feet deep so we looked for another way and found some concrete steps...

... but when we got down to the bottom of the steps a line of uniformed cops was barring the exit even though one of the doors was open a crack and we slipped through but one of the cops stood in our way and stopped us from getting out into the street until another friendlier one finally stepped in and let us pass with something like a shrug and a smile...

... and then soon we found ourslves in a strange house looking down into a kind of Dickensian parlor filled with the kind of things that fill a Dickensian parlor all for some reason in high color and high contrast and George the dog who was also in high contrast seemed to recognize this place because he began to bark excitedly though we ourselves still hadn't the first idea where we were and a portly old gentleman in the parlor looked at us askance over his newspaper as we walked nervously down the stairway into his parlor and slipped out through his parlor door and out of the house still hopelessly lost and kept on walking through the streets feeling, well you know how it feels to be lost in a strange city...

... and then when I woke up in our little cottage in Laguna Beach that feeling persisted and I found I couldn't stop looking for the damn car even though I was awake and aware that it had only been a dream. I just couldn't stop looking for the longest time until I finally got up to take George for his morning poop walk.

So riddle me that one, friends! I checked in with the Buddha a little later, to see what he might have to say about it. But he just kept saying, Breathe. Bring the attention back to the breath. I guess it helped.

Saturday in the Park With George...

... and about two dozen other Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. Here they are. A handful of them, anyway.



We were just a bit worried about taking George to this meet-up, since he can be a bit alpha with other dogs. A Napoleon complex, perhaps. He's small enough to need to assert his authority. But as things turned out, he soon adjusted to the masses, and was chasing about with the rest of them like a pro.

We've had this breed for twenty years. In the early days, we could hardly make our way from one end of the boardwalk to the other, for people constantly stopping us to ask about the dogs. They sure are attention-getters. Cute. And smart, and loyal, and a whole lot of fun. Their owners--that's not quite right: "the people they own" might be more accurate. Or "their slaves"--are manic ("dogic") in their affection for the breed. Not me, of course... I am not blind to George's faults. He is intolerant, for example, of small children, and tends to leap up and grab at the loose ends of various forms of women's garb. Still...

We found our first Cavalier in the Bel Air mansion of a television mogul. Her full name was Margaret Rose of Bel Air, but we called her Mags, which suited her just as well. She was a gift to us from her owner, and brought us many years of delight. They do sound like a snobby lot, these Cavaliers, but at heart they're just like the rest of us, playful at times and sad at others, and almost always hungry. Anyway, our George (NOT Bush, may I remind you? HARRISON...) is at the center of this picture, running forward, having a great time...

"Good Fences...

...make good neighbors," wrote Robert Frost, famously, in his poem, "Mending Wall." Or walls, or gates, or hedges. Frost actually attributed the words, in the last line of his poem, to a neighbor. His own opinion, I think, was expressed in that other line: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall,/That wants it down"--although that, too, he attributed to other forces, those, perhaps, of nature.

Anyway, Ellie and I have something of a disagreement. Not really a disagreement, because we both see the other's point of view. A couple of times a week, we walk our hill--the same hill where we have lived, in three different houses, for the past thirty-five years. We take George, the dog, and walk up around the streets, past our former abodes, for a little less than a half hour for the full circuit. It's actually how we found our first (owned) house--walking around the hill from our first (rented) one. George, of course, was not around at the time. In those days, we had a Simaese cat named Tuzigoot, after an ancient Indian ruin in Arizona.

Still, we have been walking this hill for thirty-five years, believe it or not, and we have watched the changes. There has been a good deal of remodeling going on of late--thanks, presumably, to the increase in property values and the favorable interest rates. What I've been noticing particularly in recent weeks is the proliferation of fences--and wall, and gates, and hedges. Take a look at them all, some newly completed, some under construction:
















These are just a few examples that I snapped this morning on our walk. There are more...

But here's our disagreement. Ellie's first take on this is primarily from an aesthetic point of view. She sees it as home improvement, a way of making otherwise dull house fronts more attractive. I have a darker view. I tend to see it as a relfection of the zeitgeist. I see it as being about security, privacy, secrecy, the fear of others and the need to protect oneself from them. I see it in the context of the misnamed Patriot Act, the obsessive secrecy of our current administration, a society petrified that others might spy on them and uncover their secrets.

What's good about this argument, of course, is that we're both right. And lest I begin to think myself too righteous, Ellie took pains to remind me that at our first (owned) house on the hill, I was all in favor of a locked gate at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the front door from the street. I didn't take a picture of that one. In fact, this morning we didn't even pass it. We took a different route.

A Colonoscopy; and George the Dog

I see that George Bush got reamed yesterday. His turn. He has been reaming the rest of the world these past few years. They found five polyps up there. Bill Maher expressed surprise, in his comedy act last night, that they didn't find his head--since that, Maher surmised, is where Bush must have been keeping it. Oh, and how about that Cheney, taking the reins of power for more than two hours while Bush was under anesthesia? Scary.

But anyway, it was another George I set out to write about this morning. Our George. George the dog. We took him out for an early walk along the beach. They don't allow dogs on the beach here between the hours of eight a.m. and sunset, from Memorial Day through mid-September. I guess they're afraid the dogs will take over the beaches, drive the tourists off. So if George wants to go to the beach, it has to be early morning. And on a leash. Dogs are never allowed off leash on the beaches here, not matter what time of day or what time of the year. We have seen cops stationed with binoculars on the cliff tops, if you can believe it, scanning the beach for offenders so that they can write them hundred dollar tickets. Who knows why they spend their time this way. Though I suppose one dog off leash could spoil it for the others. One bite...

Anyway, the beach with a ball is George's absolute all-time favorite thing. Unfortunately for him, we have to keep him tethered on a long line when we throw the ball--though sometimes, when things seem quiet and we don't see the glint of binoculars on the cliff top, I'll admit we cheat. We take him down to the far corner of the beach and let him off the leash. He loves that. Absolutely loves it. George is ball crazy. In fact, he's so ball crazy that he gets hysterical already when he see us take the long-line leash down from its hook by the door. He's that smart. And then he drags us all the way down the hill in his desperation. Or, if we drive down, as we sometimes do if the eight o'clock curfew hour is imminent, he drives uscrazy with his hysterical barking when we park the car.

Which is how it was yesterday. But he did have a great time on the beach, and came home sandy, salty, bedraggled, and in need of a bath. He didn't get one yesterday, but this morning... Well, the marine layer of cloud has lifted early and the sun is shining. And our sangha will be sitting later in the day because this is the once-a-month Sunday when our teacher, Than Geoff, comes to join us. That's Thanissaro Bhikku. We're lucky to have such a distinguished teacher on a regular basis, and we value his monthly visits. For a variety of reasons, Ellie and I have missed his sessions. Travel. Needing to stay in town... Today we have no excuses--for George's bath or for Than Geoff. More later... Have a great Sunday.

A Reunion

Well, we were reunited yesterday with George. Our dog. He was pleased enough to see us again, if much leaping up and licking of the face is to be taken as a sign of doggie pleasure; and we to see him. We have missed him on our journeys. He was well provided for, however: Lisa, who takes good care of him while we're away, has a King Charles Spaniel of her own, another (brown and white) Blenheim named Chaz; and another of her charges is a third King Charles, a ruby (chestnut brown only) named Abigail, so George was not without a peer group to run around with. We wonder if he misses the company of his own kind now. Anyway, there he was, sharing our bed with us again last night after a three-week hiatus. He likes to nestle in the crux of things, especially between human legs if he finds one of us sleeping on our back. Otherwise, he contents himself with the crook of a knee or close contact with a back.



You may think that George is spoiled, and this is undeniably true. But Ellie always reminds me that there's another way to look at it: that we're the spoiled ones, with a faithful pooch who brings so much pleasure into our lives. And if you look at things from a Buddhist point of view, our fellow creatures on the planet deserve their happiness no less than we do--and perhaps have a better sense than we of what true happiness might look like. Certainly, for them, it's not a matter of material possessions, and I don't get the impression that their minds are full of worries about the future or the past. George manages pretty nicely in the present moment, thank you. He does have one serious attachment--to the tennis balls he loves to chase. And I must confess that he suffers--untypically for his breed--from a little animosity, directed mostly toward other dogs whose acquaintance he has not yet made (he's quite friendly once he gets to know them); and, sometimes to our embarrassment, toward small children, whom he seems unwilling to trust--again, until he gets to know them.

So we're happy to have him back in our lives. Carly will surely understand. In case other readers had not picked up on this, I'm sure he won't mind if I share with you that he's another infatuated owner of a King Charles Spaniel. And "owner" of course is the wrong word entirely. We share our homes with them, but they remind us constantly that their spirits are their own.

When Georgie Met Carly

Georgie met Carly, Carly met Georgie. No, not THAT Carly—not the one who regularly posts comments on The Buddha Diaries. He’s the imposter. He merely BORROWS the real Carly’s name. The real Carly, the one I’m referring to this morning, is, like Georgie, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel—both fine examples of the breed—and they got together for the first time Sunday. A momentous occasion. I would have mentioned it yesterday, but for the fact that it was a day of blog silence.

Anyway, our George was on his best behavior. He did his usual lunge, on first sight of another dog, just to assert his authority. George, being small by nature, has something of a Napoleon complex, and feels the need to display his manliness in such circumstances. Or his male dogliness. But, as he did in short order with Carly, he soon reverted to his usual charming self and Carly proved delightful company. It’s a great breed. Ellie and I have lived with them for twenty years now—three of them in succession, and usually overlapping, though now we have only George. I have known the breed since childhood, and as a teenager, I was not a little besotted with the freckle-faced daughter of a local dignitary who had five of them, a veritable menagerie of Charlies, in their country home in the neighboring village.

Anyway, we mere humans took both these superior Cavaliers for a walk up in the hills by Griffith Park. A great surprise, for Ellie and me, to discover a little paradise there which we had never known about, in thirty-five years of living in this area—an isolated grove of pine trees with a carpet of alpine grass and wildflowers and lovely bursts of sunlight filtering through the branches of the trees. Scattered here and there, great sandstone boulders half-buried in the ground, a wonderful invitation to sit in meditation. So distant, even though so close to the city, you could easily imagine yourself for a moment in Yosemite.

Enough for today. I have had computer woes since six o'clock this morning, including a frustrating half-hour on the telephone with my "service provider." My Internet connection has been unreliable for weeks now, and I'm getting ready to throw the whole damn electronic nightmare in the fish pond. Second thoughts, no: cruelty to fish. Definitely un-Buddhist. Take a breath. Buy a new router. I'm beginning to conclude that the router is the source of all my problems. I'm online now without it, and the problems have disappeared. More later. Or tomorrow... DV, as my mother used to say. (Deo Volente, that is. Latin for "God willing.") If I believed in D...


Photo Credit

George Gets Skunked...

... That's the morning headline. I did the usual thing. If it's still dark when I first get up, I take him out on a leash for his morning pee. When it's already light, I open the back door for him and he runs down into the garden by himself. This morning, it was kind of half and half. I judged that the morning twilight was light enough.

Big mistake. I was just about to settle down for my morning sit when he charged back in and the reek of skunk was everywhere. George's first instinct was to try to rub the stink off onto the carpet. Not a great idea. The carpet is only a year or so old, and Ellie has been been protecting it carefully. I picked him up and woke Ellie. The remedy might be a tomato juice bath--but did we have the wherewithal? It seemed not. Ellie recalled that feminine douche might also do the trick, but we didn't have that, either. A trip to the market, then. George was shut out on the balcony to await his reward for bad behavior, and I fired up the Prius...

I made it to the local market twenty minutes before opening time. Called Ellie on the trusty cell phone. She thought the other, slightly more distant market might be open. I drove further, but that one, too, was closed. Drove back to our local market, which by this time was open, and chatted with the girls at the checkout counter about feminine douche. They giggled. Armed with my purchases--four cans of Campell's tomato juice and a pack of extra strength water and vinegar feminine douche--I took the back route home to avoid the high school traffic.

George had his bath. He got a good rub with feminine douche first, and tomato juice next, followed by dog shampoo. He emerged looking bedraggled and justly pained by the experience.



There must be a teaching in all this. One thing, for sure, is never to mistake morning twilight for the light of day: George gets the leash if there's even a hint of darkness in the air. Otherwise: don't ever take your sitting time for granted. Life's contingencies might get in the way.

The Itches

George has the itches. I mean, seriously. He's been at it night and day, scratching incessantly, for about four days now. At first we attributed it to one of his allergies--he seems to have a number of them, poor dog. But last night Ellie found a couple of fleas in his coat, so they are likely the culprit. Where there's one, she says, there must be thousands. He's been kept up with his Advantage, of course, but perhaps this particular breed of flea has found a way to survive that treatment.

Anyway, it's so bad now that he has been keeping us awake. Pampered creature that he is, he sleeps on our bed, and his presence there assures a constant minor earthquake through the night--with aftershocks. And during the day, I imagine, he is breeding colonies of these unwanted guests in the carpets.

Ah, well. All this makes me think of the early days of my meditation practice, when one of my teachers insisted on total motionlessness while sitting. An itch, he explained, if scratched, would certainly return--if not in exactly the same place, then certainly in another. The same with all those little aches and pains that strike the sitter in virtually every part of the anatomy. Useless, this teacher said, to shift the body in the attempt to ease the pain: like everything else in life, it comes and goes. If not quite an illusion, then at least it's transitory. Like all those pesky passing thoughts and feelings that arise in the mind when you're sitting there, trying to keep the concentration keen, they will surely disappear--and leave room for others to arrive and drift away in turn.

There were two tricks I learned to deal with these ephemeral distractions--whether itch or pain (or, of course, other bodily sensations, thoughts, or feelings): you could either give the mind the task of watching them intently until they simply dissipate, or you could take the mind to some other, more congenial part of the anatomy and rest it there in concentration while the affected area naturally calms without the attention it was getting previously.

I'm not sure how to convey these rather successful techniques to George, whose understanding of my language is limited to simple commands like "Sit!" "Hurry-up!" means it's time to pee--an art he has mastered with some efficiency. But "Stop scratching!" appears to be beyond his comprehension, so I'm sure the more complex "Bring your attention to some other part of your body" would not register in his brain.

I'm wondering, too, what this says about the natural impulse to scratch and itch. I guess we humans are blessed with a wisdom--or at least the ability to acquire it--superior to the animal world. If only we could use it. I often think we have a great to learn from dogs and cats--and other living beings--about such things as being in the present.

I do understand, I think, the value of motionlessness when sitting. Even the slightest physical movement distracts the mind from its concentration and interferes with the relaxation of the body, requiring muscular action and reaction. So I try to sit still. There are moments, though, I will admit, when the urge is so powerful that it becomes irresistible and I find myself succumbing to it. Like that young man in the limerick who hailed from Natchez, I confess that, sometimes, at least, "When I itches, I scratches."