NEW YORK NEW YORK

"It's a hell of a town.  The Bronx is up and the Battery's down."

I can be here and in Kathmandu, Nepal.

 I can be thinking about the people and animals shaken

by the worst earthquake since 1934,

 about the stranded climbers and the dead.

(5000 and counting)

 I can know, I can mourn and I can pray.

 https://youtu.be/EbG0ljkBlu8

~*~

I can show up on Monday night,

join my writing group "The Moving Pen" for a final reading.

(screen capture partial of photo by Elizabeth York)

 I can appreciate our brilliant leader Frank Haberle,

drink wine and share cookies with our friends.

 I can lose my thoughts in an audio book

till sleep comes.

 I can sit Zazen with the New York Center for Contemplative Care,

find space for peace.

 I can be surprised by a protest while waiting for the bus home,

and capture some of it on a brief video.

(First a surge of 20 or so young men all in black and many with masks ran past me at break neck speed.  Then one kid was caught and cuffed and the march continued across 23rd Street  toward the West side.  I'd been seeing helicopters circling and eventually, when I got on the bus, ambulances and police vans followed.)

https://youtu.be/cEJ7ooYOETw

I can think about Baltimore, about all the protest marches all the way back to the sixties.  I can mourn for all the people, for all suffering beings, for the planet.

I can pray.

THIS WEEK SO FAR

Monday
6-8PM

Spent two hours with my regular writing group.  The first 'prompt', apropos of the weather, from Shel Silverstein

 We wrote for twenty minutes.  I set myself the task of turning the prompt into a transition to what I really wanted to write about.  The second 'prompt' was a Faulkner quote "Perhaps they were right, putting love into books.  Perhaps it could never live anywhere else."  I wrote a biting end-of-relationship scene for that one.  I won't be showing them here because they're both too raw.  We read aloud to each other, but I need to take them further than that rough start before sharing them in print.  The point of the work using the Amherst Method is to keep ideas flowing.

Tuesday
7-9:30 PM

Chanted the Hanuman Chalisa with Shyama Chapin, Joelle (pictured) and others at Broome Street Temple

A forty verse prayer written by Shree Goswami Tulsidas in the sixteenth century to honor Hanuman for his total devotion to Lord Rama. Animated, taken from the book 'The Hanuman Chalisa' by B. G. Sharma (an amazing and gifted illustrator). Music graciously provided by Krishna Das. Video by anjani lynn white.

Transition 
Late night is early morning in France  This beautiful song is the tag line to one of my favorite blogs
Bob and Sophie's French Adventure

Wednesday
6-7:30 PM

Zazen
New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care
http://zencare.org/

http://zecare.org/archives/zentalks/heart-sutra-new

Sunset

Night Falls

One  of those toss and and turn, flipping flopping nights

Thursday 

5PM

Sleep deprived, or not, the day was lovely

To the National Arts for a my friend Lorelies Art reception, only to be informed that the club is closed for the rest of the Summer !  Hmmmmmmm.... ?

Sweet scented blooms on my way home..

 ..took the sting out of disappointment

It turned out that somewhere between her very clear email  announcement, and my writing it down on my calendar, my brain reverted to the last show at the Arts club...the reception was at

National Association of Women Artists, Inc.

(N.A.W.A.)
80 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1405, New York, NY 10011

(((sigh)))

 The show is up through this month so I can visit another time

~*~
It is not profitable to spend time on such questions as whether there was ever a beginning to the succession of universes that have been arising and reaching their end for innumerable aeons, or why sentient beings must revolve endlessly from life to life in this sad realm of samsara. What is needed is to direct one’s attention to the present, thinking: “This is how things are; what is to be done about them?”
—Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin by John Blofeld http://www.shambhala.com/bodhisattva-of-compassion-2.html

Here comes Friday