carried away

I had the most lovely walk yesterday morning. I do not have the words to do it justice, I’ll just say that I walked down to the credit union to deposit a $26.27 refund from my State Farm car insurance for moving to San Luis Obispo from San Diego, and when I walked out the front door onto Marsh Street I for the most part went away, no Buddy Cushman mind in sight, and simply drifted along in the early morning sun. To places I’d been, other places I didn’t know about, a long interesting dead-end street way out at the edge of the city, cars on the 101 whirring beyond a stand of trees. Close enough to one of the “Seven Sisters” volcanic plugs to see hiking trails and hikers on them. I didn’t experience a bit of difference between the moving-along, sun-shaded creek always close by and me lazy in a dream-like state, shaded by the downtown buildings and the residential houses on the inviting streets heading back to this room I call home because it’s the one I’ve got.

I’ve sent out a lot of stuff in the three plus weeks I’ve been a SLO resident and received nearly nothing but ‘No’s’ on the flip flop – the YMCA interview an exception. I could have been doing a whole lot better if just seeing and naming things, instead of having feelings about them and wishing they were different. It helped to talk with my Zen teacher about it on Zoom yesterday. There’s nothing, I was reminded, that’s not practice. The hard things and the allowing the gentle morning to carry me away.

In Al-Anon you may hear, “You’ve got to take the bitter with the better.” Up here on the streets of San Luis Obispo there’s taking the better with the bitter too. Um, not so much actively taking as being available to be fetched.