It say something about the climate in California that it took a little over five months for Zachary and I to need to put a wet weather plan into effect. For sure, on a couple of autumnal Mondays, it had been cloudy or damp enough to have us worried, and once it even started raining right after we had packed away the cushions, but last Monday was the first time the forecast had rain all day. And rain all day it did, which did not make for my having much fun riding to the jail in the afternoon and to meet students in the evening. I did not ride downtown for the sit – I had taken a friend to the airport very early on Friday morning, kept the car over the weekend, and picked her up on Monday morning, which reminded me afresh that I find freeway driving in heavy rain much more stressful than riding my bike in the same conditions.
In any case, the timing of it all worked out perfectly for me to be downtown, a little damp around the edges, in one of the many POPOSes. I had not actually visited the space before, at 2nd Street and Mission, but it lived up to its billing as a spacious, and most importantly covered, atrium, where people were mostly eating their lunch – either in pairs, conversing, or solo, looking at their phones. A mandolin player busked away by the entrance, which made for a more focused sit than did the general murmur of conversation when he stopped.
Zachary and I both enjoyed the sit, even if no-one else who had hoped to be there actually made it. Today’s forecast looks better, though Zachary is away, and without him I cannot bring cushions for everybody, so we will be sitting on the big concrete blocks by the seawall next to our usual grassy spot, if you are able to come along.
We still got to sit under a tree.
Shundo David Haye 