Pink Coyote

aloha

My little menahuni. I've missed you! We are on vacation on an island in the Pacific: all around us tropical flowers abound and fruit hanging low on trees ready to be devoured. We are staying in a plantation house in Hana, HI-paradise on earth. Besides my forested mainland home, I've never witnessed such lush beauty . Our vacation is more than half over and I can already feel the grief creeping in. Miles is so at home here. As always, the medicine jumps forward on trips far away from the familiar. That may be why I love to travel so much. The learning is accelerated without the shortsighted thinking I experience at home. Some things that I need intimate time with can really seep in. A few items are digesting here. A few mantras seem to be repeating: You can either be right or you can be free. If one must defend a thing, perhaps there is more work to be done. More comfort levels to be scaled. Doing nothing (wu wei) can be a very productive act. Geckos in a drinking vessel must go. Now I'm cracking myself up and getting totally off track. I'll have to finish this post later! HA HA! There are turquoise Venus pools to throw myself into from great heights and Pele's mountains to be climbed. Aloha!

more katie

"Underlying belief: My life should have a purpose. Is it true? Yes. Can I absolutely know that it's true? No. How do I react when I think the thought? I feel fear, because I don't know what my purpose is, and I think I should know. I feel stress in my chest and head. I may snap at my husband and children, and this eventually takes me to the refrigerator and the television in my bedroom, often for hours or days, I feel as if I'm wasting my life. I think that what I actually do is unimportant and that I need to do something big. This is stressful and confusing. When I believe this thought, I feel great internal pressure to complete my purpose before I die. Since I can't know when that is, I think that I have to quickly accomplish this purpose (which I don't have a clue about). I feel a sense of stupidity and failure, and this leaves me depressed. Who would I be without the belief that my life should have a purpose? I have no way of knowing. I know I'm more peaceful without it, less crazed. I would settle for that! Without the fear and stress around this thought, maybe I'd be freed and energized enough to be happy just doing the thing in front of me. The turnaround: My life should not have a purpose. That would mean that what I've lived has always been enough, and I just haven't recognized it. Maybe my life shouldn't have a purpose other than what it is. That feels odd, but somehow it rings truer. Could it be that my life as it's already lived is the purpose? That seems a lot less stressful." from Loving What Is, Byron Katie. It's no secret that I am a big ole Katie fan. She appears here frequently. She's my ZenMasterGuruFlash. Because I can find myself caught up in a hairy tangle of complicated beliefs that unconsciously infiltrate my processes like a yeasty parasite, her work resonates with me. Part of my problem is hardwiring from the early years. Part is that I am sometimes lazy about looking at me and my stuff. When I feel the whacking ker-whacka of a life lesson, I'm oft taken aback at how I could have been living this way for so long without seeing the screeching monolith before me. Her method goes beyond seeking a truth. She's so simplistic in the way that she presents her argument: DON'T ARGUE WITH REALITY. Every time I bust myself doing it, I have to laugh. Katie is known as the Woman Who Made Friends With the Wind, as she lives in Barstow where the wind is merciless and shoots grains of sand through your eyeballs. She is quoted as saying "How do I know that the wind should blow? It's blowing!" She's a woman that deeply touches my little type-A heart.

the littlest dog

Dodger dog, that is.

Though I don't pay attention to baseball anymore, I still have so many favorite memories of the 1970's team that boasted Steve Garvey on first base and Dusty Baker on third. Or was Baker in centerfield? Well, maybe I'm lacking some details in this rusty memory of mine.
Fernando was pitching in the best year of all. I was in 5th grade.

I am certain that my mom used to jump up and down on our corduroy sofa and yell "Go, baby, go!" and "All the way home!!", when we watched the games on TV. I loved sitting in the stands and singing Take Me Back to the Ballgame and eating as much of the footlong that I could manage. My cousins and I would crash in the back of the car on the long ride home, each toting a miniature wooden bat or a small, blue plastic batting helmet that might later be worn by someone's cat, or a giant foam hand with an upraised index finger.

When I met B's grandmother Lois, affectionately known as Grammalo, she showed me a photo that she had taken of him at J.J. Newbury's in Glendora wearing only a diaper and the L.A. ballcap. She is 76 years young today, getting ready to celebrate by travelling to Alaska, one of the few places she hasn't yet seen. Happy Birthday, Grammalo! You are such an inspiration to us.