Cloudscapes

When you use gmail to let someone know you're going to have a colonoscopy, then use the spellchecker, the word "colonoscopy" is not recognized. But gmail helpfully offers you "cloudscape" and "kaleidoscope." So, tomorrow is my day to enjoy a cloudscape. (The real fun, of course, comes the evening before, as the actual procedure is not bothersome.) In the usual way of the world, the air has been full of cloudy mentions of late. The news that a friend who is only 35 has colon cancer, front page news about the detection procedure, and several other mentions in the media of the disease. Not a good week for clouds or people. But maybe if you live out in the Pacific Northwest, things are different; no one has ever heard of such a thing. They live their happy kaleidoscopic lives out there, filled with oysters and geoducks and beautiful cloudscapes over the Pacific. (With very sincere apologies to Porter, if he see my words, because he knows that this is not true. Maybe it's only in GoogLand that there is no disease.)

P.S. Those folks at GoogGroundZero must be too busy having fun at the mothership, because they apparently don't know about geoducks either.)

Sitting Outdoors

On a lovely fall afternoon I'm lucky to be able to sit in my front yard. This is the first weekend in a month that I've been home, with no family or work engagements. Some people spend their weekends at that patriotic American activity called "shopping." I try to avoid it as much as possible. Maybe I should be at Home Depot, buying things to imrpove my house, but right now I'd rather enjoy my house, my yard, the sky.

Over the years at my job most of my favorite people have moved on. One was a radiant man, a music teacher who loved to spend a weekend when he could in Buddhist meditation, sitting for the weekend. He left this job because it was too hectic for him and his wife. I still miss Ramon. He was an energetic and enthusiastic teacher who loved his work but prefered a wider margin to his life, like Thoreau.

I've just started to read a new book, "How to Be Idle." More of this later.

Disclaimer: I read the newspapers and listen to npr daily and am well aware of the luxury we have living in relative comfort in this country. I realize that thinking about being idle and sitting and looking at the sky are great luxuries which a lot of the world can't enjoy. This is one of life's great puzzles. Shouldn't we be giving up all we have and going out to right the world's wrongs? Yes, but... most of us don't. So I live with the discomfort and the ambivalence of being a comfortable American, and I sit and watch the bees come to my flowers. It beats shopping.