What I kinda understood today

is that it is the plastic wrapping that surrounds us all that keeps us apart...we can get close, we can touch even, but never, ever really get skin to skin...heart to heart...boundless view to mind to mind. Always some kind of wrap that keeps us "intact" and "safe." and separate.

Is that where animals come into the picture? We can love them unabashedly, treat them like shit and they still love us...what is the word...something like unconditional...not bound by conditions, or maybe even compounded phenomena?

What would it really be like to be seen and see without the lens filter?

My first Miller Moth today...gotta call Max.








Me after Rigdzin Dupa...Guru Rinpoche Day June 13, 2008. I tried to take a photo of Milou, but there wasn't enough light.

yak shit in heaven

"Every picture has its shadow...and it has some source of light. Blindness, blindness and sight"


Tonight again thinkin' it is time to leave this country...can't really figure why I am here anyway...pissed off people can eat it...when dinner matters more than prayin' for peace...when money matters more than caring about human and animal suffering...

Some beach, some wave, some island...some other place where the pace is slower, where time is relative...where rock walls bear the imprint of female Buddhas and sleeping in yak shit is the same as being in heaven...(Photo above taken at Bum Drag, which means 100,000 dakinis. You can't see the yaks or the shit, but both are there.)

Me and Pema and a few others who made it to the lake that day...just lucky, I guess. No way out except up? Wonder how come our eyes are closed.

Oughta Be a Woman Calls it Quits on Monday...

Here is a photo of my beautiful daughter with her equally lovely daughter. (All three of us born in the year of the horse, '54, '78, '02)

Here is a photo of my daughter's eardrum on Friday evening just about ready to burst:

This was after she had driven to Bozeman to pick up her two high-needs step children for the weekend, after their dad mistakenly (?) told his lawyer that he had full responsibility for them for more than 320 days of the year. Somehow he managed to forget that she has had both Logan and Savai at least every Friday and Saturday night for the last school year. Plus for more than ten days over the last two Thanksgivings and Christmas holidays...and that she has driven to Bozeman three times a week for more than a year to connect with these kids, whom she considers her own. (All without any thought of being compensated by Keith for her time and money spent.) Tuesdays in particular she would take Logan to her choir practice, after school, because her dad, who lives in Bozeman refused to do this. (Did I mention that Logan is an awesome singer/performer?).

I know that Logan and Savai's dad is suffering in many ways that I cannot understand. I also know how many nights I laid in bed holding Chieko while her eardrums were getting ready to burst with absolutely no way to relieve the tremendous pain she was experiencing until her eardrum actually ruptured.

I feel that kind of helpless again. I can't do anything to relieve this pain...not the ear pain, not the pain of her broken heart and dreams, that night she awakened to her crazed, jealous soon-to-be ex-husband strangling her in the night.

My prayers are that Keith find his happiness, and in that, recognize the gifts that generosity bestow upon the generous. And that Savai, Logan and Amélie recognize that love is what matters without attachment or clinging. And that Chieko's ears stop hurting soon.

"Oughta be a woman calls it quits on Monday, Blues on Tuesday, Sleep until Sunday...Down, sit down, sit down..."

Just had to vent a bit tonight!