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This week in the Blog – pieces from the ongoing “As Bobbie Sees It.”

When I sit here at the screen and look slightly to my right, I see these things: a wall calendar hanging on the wall, ‘Classic Cars’, the same one I order every year, in fact the 2024 model arrived on the doorstep last night, along with a box of 60 Bic medium blue ink pens,…

I’m not sure I can really say this with words. I have a date with a woman friend in a coffee shop Saturday morning. I have offered an invitation to ‘have coffee’ to a man who the other night said to a group of us he’s, “Suffering, suffering, suffering.” He calls, he doesn’t call. There’s…

Look! A seagull, lit up by the sun, under a morning moon. In the middle of the night, enjoying a cup of coffee in the quiet. There’s being warm in the winter, delicious in the spring. Each filled with a chocolate cake, without sugar and flour – the idea of it. A 3am train whistle,…

When it’s clear I go out to look at the stars – after sitting meditation and before coffee and reading and my Morning Pages. But, let me back up to yesterday. Following all those morning things I just mentioned, when I left for my walk just before 6am, the fragrance of skunk was prominent. My…

The Buddha asked, “Are you afraid of this happiness?” I allude to this question here in the Blog every once in a while as it has a way of inviting itself into my head. My head, a disguised place Zen would call heart-mind. The Buddha’s question I can answer directly this morning — “No. I’m…

I’m moving through this Friday morning with the premise the Boy Scouts had it exactly wrong. “Don’t be prepared.” Rather like Rule 62 on a pogo stick.

I am told by friends who belong to Alcoholics Anonymous that within their literature is a piece called “The Promises”. Listed are a number of promises of a new, healthier, better and even more spiritual way of life – clear rebounds off the self-centered damage from a previous life of substance abuse. My friends tell…

When I worked as a Delinquincy Case Manager/Juvenile Probation Officer for the State of Florida in Deland, I had the good fortune to often find myself in the courtroom of Judge Joe Will. Every once in a while Joe’s patience with a young person standing/slouching before him would get to a point, and the judge…

I walked all willy-nilly on my morning walk, allowing Tuesday to take me where it would, me directionless with the occasional checkpoint: Spruce Street and Quince Street bridges; kitties on the tar of a back parking lot. Tuesday carried me out to the middle of the First Avenue bridge too, who knew, crossing over three…

Thinking about dancing quite early Monday morning. Like, it’s not so much a reliance, the kids and me, rather a dance. We dance eight dances: the Bristol Stomp; the Monkey; the Watusi; the Mashed Potato; the Camel Walk; the Hully Gully; the Stroll; and the Swim. Dancing at the Upstairs Cellar. Dancing (lessons) at the…

This is a poem I came across this morning. Translated from the original Chinese. Composed by a long-gone cat named T’ao Ch’ien. “Swiftly the years beyond recall, — Solemn the stillness of this fair morning. — I will clothe myself in spring-clothing, — And visit the slopes of the Eastern Hill. — By the mountain…

When I first began hanging around and about with people who don’t drink or use drugs a day at a time, a suggestion I would often hear was, “Make a gratitude list.” Me arriving with a life experience of pervasive self-centeredness, it was, frankly, hard to come up with even a morsel of gratitude. Yeah,…

I have always loved the Christmas song, “Let There Be Peace On Earth and Let It Begin With Me.” I listen to a version by The Tabernacle Choir, with guest soloist Erin Morley, on YouTube every so often. Including here just now. Maybe it’s a puzzling subject to blog about the day before Thanksgiving, like…

Stuff’s breaking. A message from my desktop – “You will no longer be able to send or receive emails.” And from my smart phone – “You will no longer be able to receive voicemails.” Well, you know me (perhaps), so right away I take these updates as some cosmic message that remaining silent ongoing is…

I went to a memorial yesterday. For a man I meet on Zoom, during the early sorrow of my 2021 unfolding divorce, me in Portland, him here – San Diego. The memorial on a stretch of grass just before the beach. The family provided lots of chairs, but I leaned against the lone palm tree…

Unlike most mornings, I did not read a single word with my two cups of coffee today. I sat there, leaned back in the lop-sided recliner, and just sat there. Through both cups of coffee. You know, I’m not sure why – Dogen would say today is not yesterday (or any other day). Rituals. Routines.…

These are the first two stanzas of a song I wrote long ago — ‘I’d like to fly on the back of a red-winged blackbird, I bet I’d hear the word of what it’s all about. I’d dip and slip on the back of a red-winged blackbird, and on a bank to the left I…

I’ve never been anything of a math person. And yet, this morning when I wrote the last word on the inside back cover of my latest “Morning Pages” notebook, something like a spell came over me, and I opened the calculator in my phone. Each wide-ruled notebook I have used for the “Pages” since I…

I woke up with my head like a sun room filled with crinkled crepe paper.

I saw someone using a shoe horn the other day. It made me happy. It made me smile. A blast from the past. I’m not sure I would have thought about a shoe horn without actually seeing one in use, all silvery with that interesting curvy angle. But sometimes, like right out of the blue,…

And I asked, What if I don’t need anything to be even a bit different today? What if everything is okay just exactly as it is? Three amazing bridges waiting on me this morning. Who zooms who?

This morning at 3am the stars were bright in the sky above San Diego. The cheshire-cat moon was nowhere to be seen. Yet, at 5:30, the moon was sharing its moon-lit, wonderland smile right up there in the slightly eastern sky – one or another of the planets for company, so bright, very close. Orion’s…

Yesterday I fasted. I decided to fast yesterday sometime Saturday or Sunday, and when yesterday arrived I said “Thanks and no thanks” to the food I have and made it through the day and night and so far now. Like the old soul song, “Ain’t No Big Thing,” just one cat doing his own version…

There is a mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire named Mount Chocorua. I climbed it any number of times when I was younger – with friends and with girlfriends. About six people immediately come to mind, and at least three are no longer here with us. On this green, rocky, and watery planet.…

Notice this goofy picture, a self-posed-and-captured image. This is me at a party yesterday, Ann’s grandson’s fourth birthday. A number of people – parents and grandparents and cousin in attendance. Yet, here I am, alone in a room. I woke up thinking about this, sitting in meditation with a yin and yang picture of being…

I just listened to the new Beatles single – released today. I watched the accompanying video. My heart filled up. I recollect I began paying good attention to The Beatles in 1963. Sixty years ago.

I was going to quote some lines from Walt Whitman here, skimming his ‘Song of Myself’ earlier. But I drowsed in the fully-extended recliner, lights out, after my Morning Pages, which were rather scattered, with images like an alligator in a pine tree, stuff like that. It’s Thursday. The week’s flying. I’ve landed on three…

Ann called me to the kitchen window and pointed out a luxurious skunk, prancing its way north on the sidewalk across the street. It was 4:18am. This was after I’d read the first three-and-a-half paragraphs of Thoreau’s ‘Walden.’ Including this – “I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom…

I have a card, mailed from San Francisco, a colorful painting of five cardinal-like birds – four different colors and one repeat of yellow with red trim. All with the identifiable cardinal crown. All perched on a blue branch. My friend David sent the card, I’d say a year ago, and in Golden Hill I…

Way back there in the early 1980’s I started hanging around with some people, and one of the things they often said was this – “The joy is in the journey.” I don’t remember why, but I got thinking about it a couple of hours ago. Writing today’s Morning Pages I got off on lots…

Walking up Spruce Street I looked at a set of spacious second-floor windows at a house on the corner, turned around to see they offered a view right down over the Spruce Street suspension bridge, and said to no one other than me, “That’s crazy.” It wasn’t the Patsy Kline heartbreak crazy. Nor was it…

Last night I had the memory of skating on cranberry bogs when I was a kid – the bogs flooded to protect the tender plants from the cold, the resulting ice clear and black. Last night someone was talking about feeling on thin ice, the ice cracking, and I remembered the sound of long, slow…

It took me to be on my morning walk – where it was dark and completely gray and breezy – for today’s exhaustive ‘To Do’ list to appear before me in party colors: Be kind to people.

I don’t go out to movies or disco dancing. Rent takes more than all my money. Though sometimes there seems to be enough for books and coffee and a limited selection of food. The lop-sided recliner I rejoice in I paid $50 for two years ago in Golden Hill, and I have splashed and dripped…

Saturday afternoon I went with Ann to talk about hope at a psychiatric hospital. The registration guy at the front desk asked my name, and I gave my formal name of ‘Winston.’ He stared at me. I said, “Like the cigarette,” and he kept staring at me. I asked, “Haven’t you ever heard of Winston…

Time got feeling a little different once I’d been up for a while this morning. After sitting (zazen) twice (17 x 2) I strolled out into the 4am dark and looked up at and bowed down to Orion’s Belt. It’s kind of a thing. Back inside I wasn’t able to read anything – other than…

I attended an on-line presentation last night, which left me breathless. This is something I heard last night – “Live like a promise made before the eyes of the stars had opened.” That brought to mind my hometown, and I was going to write about us as kids, me and Donnie catching chubs and shiners…

What was that story about Sampson and Delilah? Dude cuts his hair and loses all his powers? Something like that? I got a haircut yesterday afternoon – after the People’s Co-op, after a sponsor thing in a young guy’s car – and it feels like a lot of my brain flowed out through my left…

Here is another poem of sorts I read from the realm of Chinese last weekend: “Picking chrysanthemums along the east fence; gazing in silence at the Southern Hills, the birds flying home in pairs through the soft mountain air of dusk — In these things there is a deep meaning. But when we try to…

There was a deeply thick fog when I walked into the living room for meditation earlier than 3am. Now, at just before six, I’ve come here after standing in the middle of the street and staring up at Orion’s Belt – more tilted than how I usually observe it, farther toward the western sky. Things…

Last Sunday Ann brought me to a plant nursery in a neighborhood not far away. It’s a very cool nursery, kind of expensive, and on Sunday I bought a four-inch plastic pot and its partner saucer, as well as a small bag of potting soil. I also got to pat the fur of a kitty…

During my first meditation this morning, the Eric Burden and War song, “They Can’t Take Away Our Music”, strolled into the rather emptier than usual spac e of this Thursday mind. It’s encouraging and rather loving to be reminded of that – they can’t take away our music. Somewhere in a land far, far beyond…

I woke up this morning with the understanding I have no understanding. Rain on the road.

This feels like the best I can do here in the Blog this Tuesday morning: “I’ve dreamed – often – of finding the lightest rowboat and giving myself over to the endless currents. All the tree-lined bends and turns, the high golden grass of summer, at one, with the dizzy pastel leaves of late September.…

The Buddha posed a question – “Are you afraid of this happiness?” It feels like a cool place for me to be hanging out this Monday.

All sorts of wildly esoteric thoughts passing through my mind this Friday morning. Not off to see the wizard – just off to be a yellow road. If ya stumbled in here today, I have a clear hope that your day is sweet. Swell. The motivational speaker Les Brown says, “If I wake up and…

For no particular reason, waiting on a second cup of coffee, I walked back into the darkened living room and, through the mini-blinds in the large front window, saw something rushing down the street. We are at the bottom of a downhill, and the rushing was down, left to right. I went to the side…

The word “dappled” sauntered into my head about 10 days ago. I believe I was staring out kitchen slider windows in a house Ann’s sister Patty had rented in Bend, Oregon. A break from her Washington work, home, and life, and to which she graciously and generously invited Ann and I – and their brother…

In yesterday’s Morning Pages I was writing about rivers which have had significance in my life. Primarily these three, and the places in which I lived when they colored my days: the Merrimack River in Lowell, MA; the Willamette River in Portland, OR; the Wareham River in my hometown of Wareham, MA. There’s poetry fostered…

This week I hope to write about what strikes me as lessons from a kingfisher. Last week in Bend, Oregon, along the Deschutes River, I saw a kingfisher there on a human-created, steel-poled perch. Just sitting there — still, quiet. I bet it wasn’t wondering about what it would do later in the afternoon. I…

Please raise your hand if you have ever gone on vacation and fallen in love with the place in which you were vacationing, and decided to move there. And what stops you beyond the inertia of, “No, I belong here,” that place from which you departed for the vacation which – Bang!! – might be…

I’ve come to believe there are dragons. I see them everywhere – in places I won’t mention, and right out in the wide open open. I’ve spent the last week in Bend, Oregon with Ann and her sister Patty, and on seemingly endless walks there they were, those dragons, flashing their scales like winks from…

Back from Bend. It feels like the next week or so of posts here at ‘couchsurfing@70’ ought to be pictorial. One photo per day, in keeping with a growing internal wish and encouragement to use less words. To use words less. Mostly that’s about talking less. But, a decline in the number of words falling…

WBCN FM radio got it starts in Boston in 1968. I remember listening in my bedroom in my parents house in Wareham, home for the summer between and before I began wildly dropping out of college. One of the initial disc jockeys was named Charles Laquidara, and something he said, everyday, was, if memory still…