Simple, clean, sincere. Inspired by Burmese monastics who, when demonstrating in the streets against the military, chant: “May all beings be free from killing one another. May all beings be free from torturing one another…”
[Update: I forgot to mention, but if you’re in the bay area and are interested in passing out some flyers on your BART travels, hit me up at katie (dot) loncke (at) gmail (dot) com and I’ll get you a batch! Or, even better — take some inspiration and make your own, and let the rest of us know about it.]
Tomorrow is my birthday, friends, and a historic birthday it will be.
Not only because of sea otters (more on that in a second), but because — and I’m fairly certain on this — it will be the first cold-weather birthday of my entire life.
August in Sacramento, Barcelona, Agra (India), New Orleans, Boston…see a theme here? HEAT.
I love heat! Ungodly, crazy heat! The kind of unmitigated heat that gives everyone an excuse to be sweaty and dirty all day long. Where is this heat??? What happened to summer?
As evidenced by the above photo, in San Francisco we have no excuse to get all sticky and grimy. We have sweater weather. Sweater, scarf, wool sock and hat weather, plus a jacket for going outside.
Luckily, my record birthday low will be tempered somewhat by an overnight flight to Massachusetts. (To volunteer at/attend the Zen Peacemakers’ symposium on Western Socially Engaged Buddhism — remember that?) At least I will be traveling toward warmth!
Additionally, it will be an awesome birthday because before my 10pm flight there will be kayaking with sea otters and human friends at the Elkhorn Slough, a coastal wetland reserve near Monterey.
Why does any of this matter to you? It doesn’t, really, except to say that I will be traveling a lot in August (to hot places, hooray!), and will take a break from blogging. Those of you who’ve been following for a while know this is not an uncommon occurrence! I often disappear for months at a time, with no warning.
Anyway, in my opinion, with a mindful blogging praxis it’s good to get out of the internet for a while. Stretch the legs.
I am so grateful to all of y’all for reading, commenting, sharing links, and supporting me (and each other) through this little project over the last couple of years. It’s been an honor and a lot of fun to build and dialogue with you, and I hope some of the stuff you’ve found here has proven useful in your own life.
Wednesday, my day off, I visited Sacramento and did two things I hadn’t done in 10 years.
1) Hung out in historically preserved/decorated/re-imagined Old Sacramento.
2) Went to the California State Fair.
I swear, the more time I spend in this city, the more I feel like a foreigner who just magically happens to know the streets and freeways well.
To slightly fictionalize an experience: a friend (and Buddhist) once told me about a conversation she had with a buddy of hers. Her buddy said, “I could never spend the majority of my life with one partner. I’d just get bored.”
To which my friend replied, “When you look very closely, you see that a person is always changing. So staying with one person is like being with a thousand people — a new one every morning.”
Despite having spent my entire childhood living in the same place, I don’t have one hometown. I have dozens.
Blue lake swimming, mighty pines, tenacious wildflowers, climbing til it hurts, cloud-level vistas, gourmet chili cooking, 10 lovely friends in the High Sierras. Count me bug-bitten and grateful.
Me last week at the Mehserle verdict demonstration, among a crowd facing an enormous swarm of riot police; my dad in 1969 at Cornell University, when a group of Black students armed themselves and took over a campus building.
Not that the two situations are comparable in terms of danger, of course — it’s a miracle the Willard Straight Takeover didn’t explode into a bloodbath, whereas in Oakland, despite all the state weaponry, I never really believed that the cops would kill us right there on the spot.
But what an uncanny visual of a family lineage — the twin furrowed brows, the calm mouths, the keen watchfulness. Taking it in. Trying to solve the problem at hand, to find a peaceful but effective way forward.
There’s a story here about non-dualistic inheritance: a story about how none of us is really our own discrete self. How each individual, living in the present moment, also spans generations into the past. Reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s Teachings On Love last year brought this idea home for me for the first time. The subtle ways we manifest traumas, neuroses, wounds, strengths, and gifts from our ancestors.
Friends! The lucky spell continues. I was fortunate enough to go take a hike on Wednesday with Ryan. A recurring joke from me along the trail: Can I borrow your internet phone to check Feministe comments?
But really, as much as I love spending upwards of 8 hours a day engrossed in writing and reading, it’s especially important at those times to be able to unplug, step away, and reconnect with life around me. (Thanks for that reminder, Wisdom 2.0.)
What a beautiful land I’m living in, and how grateful I am to be able to witness it.
Didn’t get too much use out of my camera at the Erykah Badu / Janelle Monáe show last Friday, and I don’t do too well with low light, neither. But with a little color editing, it works out — now we all match Erykah’s bright, bright stage.
Francis and EricAt the end of Janelle Monáe's set, she jumped off the stage and climbed over the rows of seating straight toward the back of the theater. I literally thought she was going to scale the balcony somehow. That woman has some energy. Ms. Badu on stage
To be perfectly, perfectly honest, I felt a little disappointed by the show. Something about the ricocheting between extremes of inscrutable coolness and raw vulnerability that didn’t do it for me. But! The audience was simply beautiful — all kind of folks, all ages, everyone warm and friendly and smiling. I hadn’t been to a concert in a long time, and this one was a great opportunity to just walk around and take in the splendor of regular people.
Kloncke 