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Be clear! I only know this because someone told me. At Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on the East Coast, when someone speaks to the group, they are thanked for sharing. In those same meetings on the West Coast, they are thanked for their share. Verbs and nouns. Nouns and verbs. I lean toward verbs. Now, the…

One of my 2023 New Year Resolutions I was talking about yesterday has to do with better listening. Listen better. Listen with more devotion to really hearing. Every day this year. As this “listen better” has been some kind of awareness calling out for my attention for quite a while, the way I’ve been thinking…

This Blog – couchsurfingat70 – got its start sometime in 2018. In January of 2021, the 22nd to be specific, the commitment to post every weekday, Monday through Friday, fell out onto this page, and I’m happy to say that’s the way it’s gone. No missed days. Now, here’s another year, and I’m especially happy…

Maybe you know Paul Simon’s song “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” I mentioned it in yesterday’s Blog post. The schoolyard’s become a favorite place in these latter years of my life – as metaphor primarily, on occasion as solid ground with swings and seesaws when I get there – and I’m always dragging…

Right outside my window I see bird-of-paradise flowers. Some withered, past their glowing prime. Others right there, in full glorious bloom – bright orange, with blue runners, a hint of red on the green sheath. Then there are those birds not yet ready to fly, formed with all that joyful promise, and waiting. Waiting for…

My disease slipped out of the corner yesterday and came close by me. It did not whisper, the way it likes to do. It spoke clearly – “Maybe you should start drinking again. People liked you better then.” Actually, I wasn’t particularly surprised. The last week or so I’ve been spending a whole bunch of…

Here’s a thought this Tuesday morning – Don’t bother the traffic. Here’s another – Ear plugs are jewelry. And, I’ve been carrying this around – ‘Each branch of coral holds up the moon.’

I hope these holidays – the ones which count most for you – have been friendly and loving. The song says “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Hoping that’s how it feels. My Christmas day yesterday was the most wonderful time for me. Very special, friendly and loving. Some of the Christmas hours…

Merry Christmas to everyone, joyous holidays celebrating within you. Thanks for sharing this space with me. It’s a gift.

This is the deal. I woke up and got out of bed at 2:53 this morning. Sliding out of bed seemed slightly better – more wonderful even – than staying under the warm comforters. All of a sudden my day became stretched by more than an hour and a half. Not exactly alchemy – but…

Well, this is a particularly interesting Wednesday morning. I do not have a clue how this day will go. I’ll try to bring my best attention to each of its moments. Not taking any of them for granted.

I was attending an LA Zoom writing group back a few months ago, probably went to and with them five times. Then off to Idaho for my son’s 30th birthday, and when I came back I felt a hesitance to commit to three hours every Wednesday morning/early afternoon. Most of which was attendees reading the…

Riding with the tide. Going with the flow. Good to have goals.

A rather long piece about clouds having their silver linings began forming in my head on this morning’s walk, the next Blog post. But, it’s Friday and I have some stuff to do. So, I’ll say it with fewer words. Sometimes things can seem – and be – so terrible, and somewhere on another side…

I don’t know how many times I’ll have to – I’ll get to – wake up all over again. When I was a kid it was straight forward. Take the Everly Brothers – “Wake up, little Susie.” The ‘busted’ jolt of, “Wake up, you’ll be late for school.” Farther along the path came Harold Melvin…

“A single hand doesn’t call out in vain.”

I was seeing the cars with my ears on this morning’s walk. One time it was raining on me, the sun was shining on me, and I could see my breath – all at once. Yeah, I saw this too. All my senses showed up for the view.

Overheard Friday afternoon: “Clumsy and mistaken in a thousand ways. Yet I go on.” Here, rainy days and Mondays.

Lately, a word which has floated through my mind a bunch, here and there, now and again, is this: “Recalibrated.” I kind of love that word. If you know me you know I’m fairly clueless when it comes to things mechanical and technical, science stuff and for sure math. Maybe “recalibrated” takes you to those…

I began walking the same early-morning route every day, except Sundays, early last summer. When September came around, and school started again, I amended my steps and cut back toward my neighborhood on an earlier street. Wisely deciding to mostly avoid the realm of tons of kids and lunch pails, moms and dads, and cars…

Every window in my car was covered with dew this morning. Every street I traveled bloomed with flowers. San Diego.

I woke up this morning strangely alert. Lighter, like some of me had fallen off in the night. There’s Stevie Wonder and there’s Marvin Gaye, and there’s me dancing all over the place, sitting quite still in the recliner, a small oil palette and notebook on my lap. “Is there enough coffee in the world?”…

Somewhere in the middle of the night I thought I heard rain softly falling on the condominium complex roof. It could have been dreaming. But, sure enough, there were puddles all over when I left for this morning’s morning walk. Not long into my walk the sky began misting so heavily that only a weatherman…

The last three sentences from today’s Morning Pages: “And slow-motion brain requests best attention whenever getting there from here, here from there. Seeing the traffic while not bothering it. Here’s a new Friday falling out of the world.” What we got.

The other morning the song “What Kind of Fool Am I”, sung by Robert Goulet, strolled into my head. Who knows why these things happen? – I don’t. I mentioned it to someone and then it wasn’t there anymore. Then, on my walk yesterday morning, it came running back into my head, waving its hands…

If you follow along this blog – rather painstakingly some days I’d guess – you know I talk about Zen Koans a lot. In “The Spy Who Loved Me”, Carly Simon sang “I wasn’t looking, but somehow you found me.” That’s exactly how it was, and is, with the Koans and me. And if “spying”…

“Ah, you are kind – and I? must dance with the wind, make my own snow flakes, whistle a contrapuntal melody to my own fugue! Huzza then, this is the dance of the blue moss bank! Huzza then, this is the mazurka of the hollow log! Huzza then, this is the dance of rain in…

This is a Monday morning. Two cups of coffee, two Koans, a shower of back-and-forth texts with an angelic grandmother, my forever Morning Pages (from which sprung today’s post title), a walk mimicking the other days’ walks, and in which my right knee thought the “joke” thing was pretty fun. Off to Trader Joe’s, out…

Not so long ago, within all the years of this life, someone stopped loving me. Recently someone new has arrived to love me, again. I’ve wondered out loud, “Do we get second chances?”, and in my case the answer is “Yes.” Yesterday I was fortunate to have Thanksgiving dinner with four other people. Last year,…

Thank you for sharing this space with me.

I woke up this morning with the cool sensation of and intention to run toward all the “No trespassing” signs. Like not chickening out when the maps say, “Thar be dragons.”

I guess I can say I’ve been something like “hung-up” on the word “Here” the last few months. The idea behind the word, beyond the dictionary. A few months back I sat down in a meditation meeting in Ocean Beach, about six miles from this keyboard, and I’ve certainly rejoiced in both my boogie boarding…

When I first glanced at this picture high up on a wall in a Mexican burrito shop in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego late Saturday afternoon I saw a woman’s face. There were many paintings and other pictures on the shop’s walls, almost all faces with some distortion in the most interesting way.…

I found myself awake through most of the night last night. I can’t say why. Awake is awake. I was aware of the quiet, the solemn stillness of the middle of the night. Something nourishing, reminding of the question, “What does the moon make grow?” There was a time when being awake in the middle…

Clear, blue-sky, sunny, sparkling day. A day for trimming palms. Me too.

I awoke this morning – so grateful for another day – my mind all swirly with music. For instance, while writing my Morning Pages the song “Maybe” by The Chantels (1958) appeared (“Maybe, if I pray every day…”), followed quickly by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers’ “Government Center”, (1972), such a joyous Boston song…

Back from Idaho. I read this this morning: Attention! Master Jizo asked Hogen, “Where have you come from?” “I pilgrimage aimlessly,” replied Hogen. “What is the matter of your pilgrimage?” asked Jizo. “I don’t know,” replied Hogen. “Not knowing is the most intimate,” remarked Jizo. At that, Hogen experienced great enlightenment. Not trying to be…

Off to Idaho. I just had the funniest vision, with every book I was picking up and seeing with considering eyes – Can I bring this one? Is this the right one? Is there enough room for this one? Each of these books wildly waving its arms and hands at me – “Me, me, bring…

I arrived through Zoom in Colorado Springs yesterday afternoon – Mountain time – to sit with a few folks gathered to consider this Zen Koan: Blue Cliff Record, Case 27 : Yunmen’s Golden Wind A monk asked Yunmen, “When the tree withers and the leaves fall, what’s happening?” Yunmen replied, “It’s revealing the golden wind.” I don’t…

I think I have been preparing for this life right now for a very, very long time. Perhaps I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

From the LA Zoom writing group 45-minute rave-on yesterday: Once upon a time it was Halloween. Just not yet. Jessica Wheeler – ‘Jessie’ to her three besties – loved Halloween more than anything else in the world – more than her parents (sorry Mom and Dad), more than Trader Joe’s mint chip ice cream (crazy…

Recently I’ve found myself in two serious traffic jams, and have barely noticed. I was aware of time passing, and of little forward progress. Like driving from there to here, and dawdling along the way. Here’s another word – frolicking. This doesn’t feel like teaching an old dog new tricks. No. It’s like whispering to…

This Blog space today is like vast emptiness. With musical accompaniment from Earth, Wind, and Fire – ‘That’s the Way of the World.’ “Child is born, with a heart of gold. Way of the world.”

Last week I shared in this space the poem “Summer Found Me”, from the new poetry collection, “my startled heart.” The first stanza of that poem ends with this line – “Me all silent, stupefied, blown out with thinking.” Often writers are encouraged to “Write what you know”, and sometimes I do that and there’s…

Gifts I’ve been lost in the idea and reality of gifts lately. And the way gifts linger – on and on and on. When I stand above the brushy canyon, next to the grove of eucalyptus trees, and I both hear and see the afternoon breeze blowing through the branches and leaves, it’s so clear…

From “my startled heart”: Summer found me sitting on a log,  ruffled by the afternoon westerlies,  at the edge of a eucalyptus forest,  the trees speaking among themselves, in braille,  rubbing shoulders.  Me all silent,  stupefied,  blown out with thinking. Some lullabye from far over there, beyond  and through the stripping bark. Something nearly remembered, …

Recently, someone asked me this question – “Where did you come from.” It’s only been four or five days since being asked that question, but it has become something very like a Zen Koan story for me. Of course there are these answers: I came from a divorce in Portland, Oregon. I came from the…

I woke at 2:20 last night, a dream running away. I swear I could hear it giggling – “Haha, can’t catch me.” I lay there very awake until after 3:30 before falling asleep a little while before the phone’s wake-up call. Two more dreams had come during that short sleep, and I could remember every…

I dreamed I was a Mexican in another lifetime. And there was this senorita I was crazy about.

Recliner with coffee time earlier, and the thought floated into my head – being tangled up. The very cool idea of being tangled up in something. Inseparable. Something sweet. Something surprising. Something which – being tangled up in and with – adds to this life. Makes it bigger. A little while later I had a…

(From yesterday’s LA Zoom writing group 45-minute rave on:) This story begins with Jimmy Longley walking out to the middle of the Vermont Street Bridge. Maybe it says something about you, how you took that opening sentence. Or about me, the way I’m telling it – this story. I wonder if the experience of hearing…

Lately – and by lately I mean the last couple of weeks or maybe couple of months – while moving through my morning routines – and feel free to call them rituals – which pass in this order: a kind of praying, meditation, two coffees and a bunch of books, writing my three ‘Morning Pages’,…

My new book of poetry – “my startled heart” – arrived Saturday. It’s already available on Amazon, though ones directly from me will be signed and with a special, cool bonus. It’s very exciting. I’m excited. Here’s a piece of the poem “dangling” from the book: It was just three weeks ago  I remembered.  I…

On an early walk Saturday morning I passed a record store I pass six mornings a week, and for the first time in all the months I’ve strolled by I saw a sign painted on the store’s side wall. The sign was this – ‘You must be mistaken.’ Let me say my heart leapt up…