Chance = Change

Though I vaguely recall getting some small fee for a few poems I once had published by a poetry journal long gone, that may be the figment of my yearning imagination. So much , though, is now clear: BACKSTAGE has put my first article for them into today's edition, and they will be paying me 75 whole dollars for it!!!! I may frame that check....though Peter says we can frame a copy of it....I can now consider myself a professionbal writer! Yikes! We shall buy today's issue and see what it looks like in print!

Meanwhile, Menla and our Peace Retreat stays with me so vividly...Peter went down to Tibet House last night to listen to the first of four lectures Bob Thurman is giving on Tibetan teachings....called The Lam Rim....and while there, as had been agreed, he spoke with Justin Cruz about volunteering to help digitalize a slew of lectures for use online....Peter goes back today for further discussion on that. And I will join both Peter and Paul at next Wednesday's Lam Rim lecture...

I would also be going to hear Sharon Salzburg's talks on Tuesday night at Tibet House, but my committment to the 4610 Villagers and our Drama Group there remains strong, and the work we are doing on MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM is too much fun to interrupt. These 8 elderly new-born actors are having the time of their lives! And so am I....and they GET Shakespeare so well...understand and speak it like it has been a part of their lives forever,.,,and they adore it...frankly, it's a revalation to me: age and life experience enrich understanding...and these people are so smart.

I am stunned how deeply being at Menla affected Peter. Also being in the presence of a strong, articulate, wonderfully crazy and larger-than-life man like Robert Thurman...Peter really "got " him and adored being in his company, sitting, as it were, at his feet and learning. The fact that Thurman is an athletic and vigorous man, climbing Tibetan mountains in his mid-60's, braving snows and ice to circle sacred mountains, also is deeply appealing to a man like my husband...as well as to the rest of us! He lives his Buddhism vigorously and is passionate about the state of the world....one of the things I will always remember about this latest time at Menla is the way he wept for the sad illusions our world leaders live under...we all felt it. And it was powerful. Compassionate. That sort of vulnerability is human enough to make us all feel honored in the sharing. I know I felt that way.

And in the meantime, the Blade Wheel teachings kept mercilessly slicing away at even the subtlest attempts of my thinking to hide away from the inevitable realizztion: I have lived my life in the illusion that I actually am the most important person on this planet...and though i value my strength and abilities to conribute to others in meanful ways, I had to weep for my innate and arrogant selfishness. My unconscious living by taking unfair advantage of others. We all do it...it is on so many levels socially acceptable...we are, none of us, evil people...not even close to evil...but we are so often UNCONSCIOUS of how we live in the world...and this retreat made me more deeply conscious....took a layer of protective skin away and left some sensitivites...though it feels tender, I am nonetheless, grateful. And, of course, deeply thoughtful. Negotiating the City under the canopy of thought that currently accompanies my every move is an interesting experience. Subways are interesting for sure in my state of mind. But more on that later...

Time for more exploration of the world, as I wend my way to class.....xxevalyn