When I was sick over the hot Labor Day weekend, I consoled myself with the thought that there would be many more days like that coming before we moved into winter. There have been a few, but the warm weather has had a hard time sticking around; instead of a five-day weather system, which I think of as typical, we get two days, then the fog and mist cool everything down again. Together with waiting longer for the mornings to get light, and being surprised by the sudden onset of evening now we are past the equinox, it has been a little more autumnally melancholic than I was anticipating.
I also had a little stretch where I felt pretty busy, and was casting an eye over my calendar to see where the space was. Of course space did show up – a three hour block became a time of taking care of enough loose ends that I felt on top of things, and I decided one evening that the best thing to do was sit in a hot bath reading the New Yorker, which has long been a kid of rest cure for me.
There have been many and diverse joys: exploring new-to-me parts of the city with someone very experienced in that realm, on a day where we came across people dressed scantily for the Folsom Street Fair or brightly for an electronic music festival; leading a couple of sunny roams, one centered on the Panhandle and the park, the other in the Presidio; seeing two coyotes in the space of about twenty minutes on a ride, one crossing Great Highway and loping along the dunes, the other in the quiet side streets of Daly City; officiating a couple of weddings, one a rather grand affair, the other as small and simple as possible.
On Friday, after tea and chat with a Zen Center friend, and feeling like I wanted to continue feeling calm and quiet, I decided to honour my commitment to attending afternoon zazen rather than going downtown to participate in the anniversary edition of Critical Mass, though, when I read the accounts and saw the pictures, I was a little regretful at my choice. Bikes, and the bike community, are good medicine too.
Shundo David Haye 