FIRST ZENDO ZOOM

4.20.2020

6:00 P.M.

READY

 This device programed specifically to join in Zendo Zoom sessions and hand delivered two days ago by my dharma brother, Alex Godin
IT WORKED!

First the bell, then dedication, then Zazen (sitting), then

Sensei Koshin gave a Dharma talk about the weight of all the sorrow and fear that pervades currently, his and every ones. Next there was time to connect individually and I lost picture but retained sound for a while until 7:09, when the device told me I was out of battery time. So, I'm currently charging first my camera battery and will leave the device charging overnight. I intend to participate again Wednesday and Friday.

'Teddy' and 'Little Bear' attended as well.

 

Koshin read a poem by Rilke which I can't find, but I've been on a Rilke search since. I first read 'The Duino Elegies" way back in the late fifties or early sixties, but not since. I'll ask Koshin for the poem.
Meanwhile, here's a quote I like:

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”


4.21.2020
Midnight
Walking meditation to the 24 hour Supermarket 6 blocks West. No one anywhere till I got there. Bought some groceries and carried the heavy bag oh so slowly, halting every block to breathe deeply. Shot these tulips two ways when I was within two blocks of my building. My legs were shaking all the way up the three flights. Then I sanitized each purchase and stored them in various containers. I washed the gloves, my hands, some clothes and sprayed the bottom of my shoes. 2:45 a.m. finished. I think I'll sleep well.

Painterly

Scenic

6 a.m.

<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>

WHAT is IT?

It's a meditation

the practice of patience

It's turmoil silenced

 a fast spreading emptiness

It's a run-on sentence

the elephant in every room

4.15.2020
Nonetheless
Going out to the Post office
 

I will be counted

Surprise gift from Verizon-my Land line

Fees will be waived for bills from 3.22 through 5.22

 

Laundry line in 'little India'

Lexington Avenue in the twenties

Commercial Construction has been halted
but the cranes remain



4.16.
My Manhattan Views
11:00 a.m.

6:30 p.m

What a terrible Decision
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/15/835179442/we-alerted-the-world-to-coronavirus-on-jan-5-who-says-in-response-to-u-s 


4.17
Daily defense Morning and Evening
So far, no temperature

 Sun rising in the East

Today slipped away
The Easter Tulips are ready to Fall

Crow hunting pigeons woke me

later
After too much news
Made spaghetti with tomato sauce.
Left the pandemic behind for awhile
Escaped to  Channel 21
watched
"To The Manor Born"
In To the Manor Born, Penelope Keith plays Audrey forbes-Hamilton, an upper-class woman who, upon the death of her husband, has to move out of her beloved manor house to the estate's old lodge. She manages, however, to keep her butler, and her much loved Rolls-Royce motorcar. The manor is then bought by Richard DeVere played by Peter Bowles, a nouveau riche millionaire supermarket owner originally from Czechoslovakia. DeVere and forbes-Hamilton have a love-hate relationship which is eventually resolved in the final episode in which they marry.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK7q86XSD9g

Then
"Hold the Sunrise"
Edith, a widow who dreams of retirement in the sun and finally marrying her boyfriend, is dealt a blow to her plans when her 50-year-old son Roger arrives home, announcing he's left his family and is back at his childhood home to try and find the same happiness he had growing up. Edith and Phil, her neighbor as well as former-turned-current partner, have to put a halt on their wedding designs and hopes of moving somewhere tropical to work through things with Roger, including what, and where, his next steps will be.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJIDTYMiMf0

So ends a perfect day locked down in Manhattan
<<<<<>>>>>>>

EAGLES, TULIPS and BEACH MEMORIES

Eagles
The chicks were just fed.  There are two but one dominates,
and is often on top of the other one. 

One of the parents hunts while the other tends the nest
They trade off many times a day,

Amazing creatures

 Look at the spread these carnivores have provided: meat
(can't identify the small mammal), fish (seems to be favored) and fowl.

https://youtu.be/YCkWGbEUr-o

Tulips

These were hanging on my door Friday

From my upstairs neighbors, two young women I sometimes refer to as 'elephant footed' or 'the thudersons'.  We had a talk after a really alarmingly noisy, large object dropping, sort of day and night.  They were apologetic.  One is working in the health care policy field, and the other is a college student and part time Nanny.

The note that accompanied their gift

Sunday I hand delivered this little drawing
with two perfect organic apples.

Beach Memories
Monday's writing group session prompt
Six quick sketches


1. Amagansett, Long Island - Sneaking out to the ocean with a hurricane coming on because we needed to see it, me and my cousin Paul lost my inner tube to the waves. Then we invaded the abandoned lighthouse and found a box of a Labrador puppies no more than a five weeks old in a high box down in the basement that always flooded.  We ran back to the little cottage rental and got help rescuing them.  My cousins kept one and though I wanted one, we found homes for the remaining three instead.
*

2. Hampton Bays, Long Island - Dusk. Me and Paul holding hands walking home together talking about a horror movie seen at the drive in where somebody suddenly goes crazy and becomes a murderer…chattering about how we would never kill one another even if we went crazy, but how could we be sure, how would we remember not to hurt one another…if we snapped like that?  Chattering on and on, promising, reassuring each other, but slowly drifting further and further apart as we descended the long hill to another Summer rental place, grateful for the presence of grownups.
 *

3. Jones Beach, Long Island - Swimming just outside the first sand bar I felt a slippery thing brush my leg, then saw a fin.  SHARK!   Swimming blindly wild toward shore till out of breath I emerged on the beach.  Some lazy fisherman had left a baited float and attracted sand sharks to the safe area.  The beach closed for a week. The weather turned cold.
*

4. Somewhere in Connecticut  - A lake house rental.  Just the memory of stones, smooth stones under my feet, and velvety water lapping against my ankles.
 *

5. Fire Island, New York  - Alone. Falling asleep between high sand dunes in the late afternoon of a September day, and waking at dusk to hundreds of Monarch butterflies perched all around, some on my body.  The surprise of that, the feeling of their wings, breathing in their pale scent…the faint sound of their fluttering.  I couldn't move.  Suddenly they flew off--first one, then many, then all.  Wind rising.  Waves crashing. The distant calls of sea birds.
*

6. St. Maartin in the Virgin islands  - A week vacation with Mother, how the horizon disappeared one moonless night of a billion stars as we stood watching from the boardwalk.  The starry sky mirrored exactly in the dark water merged with it.  It was as if we were floating in infinite space.  I became viscerally aware that gravity was all that held us to the earth--felt it.

~*~