Twisting with my sister to Herman's Hermits...in Marin county, California today. I'm suffering the end of my virus, horrible sore throat, cough, and layrngitis, but I can still smile and be silly and dance in the dining room!


Heading home on the red-eye flight tonight. Minnesota whirlwind of school and work assignments awaits me. (Well, to be perfectly truthful, I've been working a bit every day while here, so the work traveled to California too!)

Hope you're all well and that you are able to speak and sing. I literally have no voice.

Here's a photo of my dad. He was a character, larger than life. I loved him.



I was blogging today with someone who wants to quit smoking. And it hit me, hard, that I lost both my parents when they were only 65, and they both smoked for most of their lives. Mom did give up cigarettes in her later years (yeah!) but I always have assumed that her breast cancer was related to the many years of heavy smoking. Dad gave up alcohol in 1978 and used to say, "I can't give up everything!" and meant it. Giving up smoking seemed impossible to him. And he died of lung cancer.

I feel them with me every day, but it sure would be nice if they were here on earth. They would be so interested in what I'm doing with my life now.

Every time I see someone I care about with a cigarette, I want to scream. In fact, I don't even hold my tongue about it. I just tell them what I'm feeling.

I'm not at the point of saying this to complete strangers, but someone I know? You bet! Stop smoking. Please.

Freshly brightened hair for fall!

I pray to the birds.
I pray to the birds because I believe
they will carry the messages of my heart upward.
I pray to them because I believe in their existence,
the way their songs begin and end each day
---the invocations and benedictions of earth.
I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love
rather than what I fear.
And at the end of my prayers,
they teach me how to listen.


---- Terry Tempest Williams

[I took this photo on September 6, 2006, at Seaside, California]

Let partners come and go

One major obstacle in living a life of love is the tendency to hold on. We grasp and cling to each other, preventing the freedom of love from rising on its own. Zen asks us to let go.

When someone comes into your life, let him come.
Welcome the person, whoever he is.
Enjoy what it is he brings, even if it's only for a short time.
When it is time for a person to go away, let him go.
Do not turn the person's leaving into an experience of rejection, loss or abandonment.
Realize that his leaving has nothing to do with you.
It is simply time for him to go.

Do this with yourself as well.
Let yourself come and go freely in life, and don't get caught in unnecessary chains.
The more you free yourself and others, the more easily you fall in love.

* * *

Comments? What do you feel about this piece of zen advice? I'm sorry I don't know its original source; I found it on someone else's blog tonight and it spoke to me.

I am suffering a breakup. It seems that this has been happening on and off for a while, but I finally woke up and really admitted it today. Hard, hard pain. I feel untethered and like this photo of the open sky (a Monterey sky). I liked being grounded and knowing who (and "whose") I am. It's something of a challenge to find my ground when I am solo. I will learn to do this.