Friday evening

I spent four hours at work today, so I'm gradually returning to normal strength. I ought to be back to normal by Monday.

Ate a small amount of soup at Lido tonight.

After that, Suzanne and I went back to the Paseo, and sat on a ledge outside the darkened Paseo Pottery and talked. The Paseo was busy: a crowd at Galileo, a crowd at the new and apparently very popular Paseo Grill, and a drum circle playing outside the Woodchuck Chop.

As I write this, my agents in the field tell me Blogblah! is home eating beans and cornbread. Tall Ed is probably talking on the phone with his daughter about the Flaming Lips concert. Suzanne is at home with her still-recuperating-from-eye-surgery dog. Some of my other friends are probably at the Red Cup.

The sky is clear tonight, and there's a gentle breeze out of the south.

As I left the Paseo, I passed the drum circle and saw a middle-aged woman dancing with abandon as others played, and more stood and listened. Further south on 23rd street, I saw a group of about four kids walking in front of a vacant store front, hanging out on Saturday night with no place to go.

Not all good, not all bad. Just things as they are. I had the sudden sense that in at least those few moments, there was not a thing I could do that could possibly be the 'wrong' thing.

I'm sad about the state of the world, and by the amount of grief caused by the arrogance and hubris of my own nation. But tonight, for a change, I feel no bitterness or angerness about it, and the absence of those feelings is a welcome change. I want to speak no harsh or unkind word again in my life.

Everything is the way it is -- the suchness, I suppose, that Buddhists are supposed to intuitively see and understand. I feel like I'm on the threshhold of something in my life, but I don't know what.

I wish blessings upon each and every one of you who read this.