sacred stuff

I watered my three plants yesterday. It was a normal and good thing to do. They were glad. My friend Bob in Massachusetts had been the solo responder to my bold request for financial support to buy a ticket and take my very first train ride, and I spent some of the day selecting a piece of my art for him – one I like a lot – and wrapping it and walking it down to the post office and sending it off into the west-to-east wind blowing across the country. At 3pm, after a small meal, I walked over to and up onto the bridge crossing the Surfliner tracks – I’ll roll over them soon enough, thanks Bob. I realized earlier in the day that I had traded the Spruce Street suspension bridge down from our apartment in San Diego to this nameless to me very cool metal structure over the tracks, and where on a corner of the biking and walking ramp I can lean and look out into the green hills and the volcanic plugs and probably all the way to forever.

At four o’clock, back from the bridge, I zoomed into Oakland and met with my Zen teacher David. It was lovely and humbling and invigorating – we talked about cats and cows a bunch. I can’t explain it, though I clearly just have. Later, after what I’ll call a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting with my on-line credit union numbers and current financial obligations and cash in wallet, my son Cameron called from San Diego, of all places, where he has gathered with others as a film-maker for a coast-to coast run by an organization of veterans, leaving from SD Friday morning and, the creek don’t rise, arriving in Wash DC like the 16th or 17th. He’ll be crashing in vans along the way.

Cameron said he walked up with a friend of his who lives in SD to eat dinner in Little Italy, and after the post office I had a coffee in Linnaea’s Cafe on Garden Street in San Luis Obispo, a spot destined to be another one of those places on both sides of the country that have worked their way into my life and become something like sacred. Life’s kind of weird.

Today I have a 2:30 appointment at the senior center with a guy from a non-profit who’s going to hopefully help me understand how to replace the Medicare coverage I’m losing in this move. Life’s kind of important.