Perfect day

This morning the sangha had our final meeting at Modified. I'm profoundly grateful to Kimber Lanning for her generosity in letting us meet there. These pictures were taken right after the meeting (click on each picture to see a larger version):


Rear: Ed, Senshin, Jesse, Hoen. Middle: Shogen, Jikai, Lance. Front: Sprite, Daishin, me.




Jikai and me. Great friends for so many years now.

As usual, some of went to Cherry Blossom for lunch after the meeting, and Amy joined us there. She'd just been to an art supplies store to buy the wood she's going to use to make the sign for The Sitting Frog Zen Center. After lunch, she made her first attempt to teach me how to drive a stick shift, and showed admirable restraint in not strangling me. Teaching me anything practical is akin to teaching a hog table manners.

Until then it was sunny and cold, but all at once the sun disappeared and rain began to fall. Amy and I went to Metro Center to shop for some stuff we needed, then headed home. Now she's off to the ashram for her yoga class, afternoon has turned to evening, a storm is rolling in, and I'm in our warm living room with our cats and a pot of tea.

Saturday, bedtime

Cold night (well, this being Phoenix, cold enough that I needed a light sweater on top of my T-shirt). Light rain falling as I went downtown and met up with Shogen at Fair Trade Cafe. There were no tables free, so we went to Conspire for a while, then had dinner at Wild Thaiger, then back to Conspire, where Daishin joined us.

The three of us standing outside, kept warm by hot tea and our laughter, talking about The Sitting Frog Zen Center, which will open on Wednesday. (The address and other details will be posted on the sangha website after we close on the place on Monday.) Tomorrow morning we will have our last meeting at Modified.

Now: Drinking a cup of spiced tea as I type this, then heading to bed, where Amy is already asleep.

New poem

A DAY IN A UNIVERSE

for Nick Hentoff

I don't know when the first star exploded,
or when the sun caught on fire. Ice on Jupiter,
rain in Tennessee. In a desert city, I help a
friend move. We carry boxes from the van to the
house, then drink tea from bowls. All but 5 percent
of the universe is dark matter. Some of us think
we know the other 5 percent. None of us likes being
very far from a toilet, however we identify it.

Thanksgiving Dharma Talk

Zen Center opens next week!

Everything is in place for the Sitting Frog Zen Center. The inspection was today, and all the repairs we requested have been done, so we'll close on the place next Monday, and the first meeting there will be a week from today.

Meantime, there is, of course, a meeting this evening.

Every day is Thanksgiving

We may close on the Zen Center tomorrow. If not, it should be no later than next Monday. Okage sama de.

A bow of thanks to those who ordered zafus and zabutons for the center. If you haven't, and would like to, click here.

Roundup

It was a busy weekend. On Friday, I read at Caffeine Corridor (that's where the picture above was taken), and then at the Phoenix Noir event at Perihelion on Saturday. Both nights, I did something quite unusual for me - I read rather than recited from memory. It feels strange to do that, but on Friday I wanted to read a very old piece from Before that I used to have committed to memory, but have since forgotten, and on Saturday I had to read because I don't have any of the Phoenix Noir story ("By the Time He Got to Phoenix") memorized. In each case, it felt strange to be using the book.

Both events went well, though. One of the owners of Perihelion remembered meeting me when I was touring with Peter Plate back in 1996, and she had kind things to say about The Book of Man.

After the reading, some of us went to My Florist, a nearby restaurant, where a bizarre piano player thumped out frenzied medleys of Beethoven, Mozart and Guns and Roses, while tossing her mane of hair around and grinning hugely at her audience.

Sunday morning's sangha meeting was good, and quite well-attended. I saw all but two people for dokusan, which, combined with a long discussion after the Dharma talk, caused the meeting to run overtime, but it was good. Afterward, a few of us went, as usual, to Cherry Blossom for lunch, and lingered for most of the afternoon.

Then I got a call from a dear friend who's just moved back to Phoenix after living in Kyrgyzstan for the last couple years. He needed help moving a desk into his new place, so he picked me up at Cherry, Blossom, and, still in my robes, I helped him move it. We spend a pleasant few hours sitting in his kitchen, drinking tea and talking with his wife, who's from Kyrgyzstan and wants to learn to speak English, but already speaks it better than a lot of Americans.

Now it's a bright, cold Monday morning. The repairs to the Zen Center are supposed to be completed today. If they are, it's just a matter of having our inspector check it, and then we can close. We should be up and running in December.