Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

This past Saturday was the last week for blueberries at the farmers’ market; next week there will be apples. Stone fruit will give way to persimmons and pomegranates. A new season begins.

Ruth works a four-day week, ten hours per day; even though I often work every day in a given week, we think of our weeks as being divided into the work week and the weekend, and we note each transition each week. This past week I started feeling under the weather on Wednesday, struggling to get a backpack full of groceries back home from Rainbow, and Ruth was beset with a bad headache, so we both took Thursday off, which of course shifted our perception of the weekend. Apart from Georgie’s short walks and trips to get food, we didn’t move for three days. I was able to do some writing, reading, and sewing, but didn’t have the energy to get my bike fixed back up again, even with the replacement parts arrived – there was no question of riding. I slept longer than usual, crashed out a couple of times in the afternoon, and enjoyed sitting out in the sun by the back door. I tested negative for Covid at least, having heard of a couple of people I know locally contracting it again.

This meant at least that I didn’t have to cancel officiating a wedding on Sunday morning – one reason I was trying to conserve as much energy as possible. It was at a venue I have officiated at a couple of times already, with a lovely young couple, joyful extended families, and a very organised co-ordinator. I was moving into the sinus headache phase, but at least I was able to function at almost full steam, even if I thought my delivery was a little flat.

My trip to Tassajara, scheduled for next week, has been cancelled owing to the wildfire smoke drifting inland from the Timber Fire, just a day after the tanto had asked if I would be willing to offer a dharma talk while I was there. So I have a little more space and time before heading to a kind of retreat at City Center for all the dharma transmission business. I might not make it to Tassajara at all this year, which has only happened in the first years of the pandemic. Having also not visited Wilbur all year – there are new staff there, and the only invitations to offer practices there came at too short notice for me – it feels like changing times.