Summer 2012

Returning home here after all my travels, across the Atlantic and into America... The trip included family time in two cities and wanderings around New York, as well as a lovely Bloomsday workshop at the Village Zendo. I'm the richer for it all in a thousand ways. My world was unfixed during those days, as [...]

The city's alive with its secrets under the cobblestones and in back courtyards, down side streets and basking on café terraces along wide boulevards bathed in delicious late-spring sun. At my desk, birdsong drifts in the window. So does the grind and screech of the trash men making their morning rounds. In the back of [...]

So much "happening" these days, and every "thing" throughout the day seems to be "unexpected." I never know what I will find in my "inbox" - in the computer, on the phone, on my plate, on the Métro, around the corner, in the next room, the next minute, under my foot, in my hand... I'm [...]

Evening. A bird sings in the tree outside my window. One word for such a moment might be "sweet." But the word is not the moment. A poem I quoted yesterday: A man pulling radishes points the way with a radish. How do you point the way?

After all this, it finally happens: Change is now, as the new French president's campaign slogan said. In France, we have a feeling of relief today, of a return to "normal" after five years of some sort of collective insanity when everything was about "appearance" rather than about things as they truly are, plain and [...]

A new month. The sky cleared and sun flooded the garden all day. Love it. All dark out there now. Love it, too. Meanwhile, caught up in French politics, which is on everyone's mind here, even if it's one of the three subjects people say are not to be discussed at a dinner party (the [...]

Already Monday, late on a quiet night. Much coming and going each day, like the wind and rain and clouds and sun. Yesterday was election day in France, and I voted for the first time. Writing that, I'm wondering what "vote" means... Many people "voted" like I did, many did not, still others did not [...]

First day back at work after much time away, and particularly after the lovely week of retreat in Belgium at the Château de Frandeux. It was a deep, wide, rich practice with a group of 108 participants... Now so many things to say... ...but, as I said there one morning, the lake swallowed my words. [...]

So it's been a long while since I last wrote here. And I've certainly given thought to what I might post, and then I've not done it. When I start writing again, like now, I wonder why I haven't written before. I love it so! Now preparing to leave on retreat for a week with [...]