Shundo David Haye

This is the last week before the clocks go forward here. It’s the time of year when robins sing before light, cheerfully heralding the day, as I used to hear them do during morning meditation at Zen Center.

Recently the light has been clear, and then soft; the other evening a short squall of rain lashed the windows on all sides of our flat, and sent the blossoms to the ground around the neighbourhood. I remember how much rain we had after lockdown started last year, and I hope for a similar amount this year so that we do not suffer from drought.

Out on my bike last Sunday, I took to the bay trail, without having intended to beforehand, as I felt it would be good for my spirit to be beside the water. I passed the ceanothus bushes on a short stretch of trail that follows a creek – sandwiched between the airport parking lots and the various freeways. My first view of these bushes was on one of my earliest lockdown rides – and they symbolise that time for me in the same way that Sweeney Ridge does (along with the associated revelation that the presence of the ridge, and the protection it offered the stretch bay to the east from the fog made the decision to expand the old airstrip into the principal airport an inspired one). 

I don’t know that there is much to say about the pandemic these days. I hope to be vaccinated in due course (and hope that the rollout of the vaccine becomes more efficient than it has hitherto), and I hope that I will be able to travel to see my declining parents before the end of the year. In the meantime, I don’t plan on doing any indoor dining or going to the cinema, and as I walk around, I am glad, still, to be in a place where people widely demonstrate their compassion and kindness by wearing masks.