Oh hai guys!

"GONNA TAKE A LOT TO TAKE ME AWAY FROM YOUUUUUUU...."

Oh, sorry. That was just me singing along to some really quality music. I've compiled a list for my drive that combines the music we listened to in Ecuador and other random shit I've listened to compulsively on the way to Burning Man in the past. I'm giving someone a ride back to San Francisco, and by that point, I'm pretty sure it won't particularly faze her that I'm belting out bad dance music ballads, our site song, Baby Got Back, a song from the Goofy movie, our other site song, and dancing to some Ghanian pop music and a quality selection of others. Incidentally, I'd never seen the Aben wo aha music video before. So good. Apparently when my cousin/surrogate brother (who is not actually blood related) was in Ghana, when this came on in the market, everyone put their shit down to dance, and then when the song was over, resumed normal actions. Like that scene in the Cantina, except with Daddy Lumba and Ghana and a marketplace rather than Obi Wan, Tattoine, and the most wretched hive of scum and villainy you will....Uh...I can't remember how the line ends. Clearly it's been too long since I watched Star Wars.

OKay, I'm going to go continue on some art. This is part of what my brain looks like right now (it's important that you listen to the correct soundtrack (it's only :30 of bad acting before you hit the unfairly catchy tune):

Also, I learned drinking games for Roxanne and Thunderstruck. There was a lot of drinking on that trip. Well, lots for me. Mostly because there were no other intoxicants. Not that I would ever indulge in other intoxicants. Except chocolate.

Also I had my nails done. Only after it was done, I realized that the color would not match with my dress for the wedding. Then I decided to go with it. That also means I can wear my maroon shoes and not bother getting new ones.

Be Seeing You

"The Technology's Taking Over!!"

I got derailed and still haven't even started Fire Monks. I like that I'm procrastinating on reading a book about Buddhism

Moving Holes: Growing Up Western Soto Zen Buddhist

I'm about to start reading Fire Monks which chronicles the 2008 Basin Complex fire and the efforts to protect Tassajara.

When I was a child, there were two tales at the core of my personal mythological cannon: May Day on the Yale campus*, and the defense of Tassajara against the Marble Cone fire of '77.

This can be the latter story for the next generation.  I've yet to read this rendition of it, but I already know one version of this tale.  I remember seeing Tassajara smack in the middle of the "burn box" (a huge tract of fire-adapted wilderness area that the forest service decided to let burn), the "3 Day Fire" (the fire was "going to arrive in three days" for weeks), and the day the fire finally hit. I remember simultaneously worrying about my home and accepting that it might burn down. I remember going in 10 days after the fire had passed with ashes coating everything and smoke from Miller Canyon heavy in the air. I know the awesome ecology of the story in far, far greater detail than I'm sure is discussed in this book and the amazing response of the landscape.  For me, the fire also means two weeks of shoveling sandbags and cutting brush to prepare for the massive landslides and floods that could have resulted (they didn't much, but that's not the point. The point is that I spent two weeks filling sandbags by hand and then Tommy Little Bear came in with his sandbag making machine and made about five times as many in something like two days. This didn't particularly bother me; I'm familiar with moving walls several inches & piles of firewood several feet. Sometimes, that's just how it goes. Actually, I still feel a deep connection with sandbags. Bizarre, I know.)

I am aware that, as with anything involving a community of people, there exist certain complex webs of feeling surrounding the publication of Fire Monks and the portrayal of the "Tassajara Five" as heroes...or something.  For me, it 'boils' down to an afternoon in the hot plunge in the Summer of 2009 (I can't remember all of the exact words, so DON'T QUOTE ME ON THIS EXCHANGE, YOU FOOLS) when a woman visiting from another Zen center turned to Mako and said something along the lines of,

"I just really really wanted to thank you."
Mako, genuinely confused, replied with something akin to (but more gracious than),"wait...for what?" Woman: "Uh...saving Tassajara!"
Mako: "Oooh right. That." [general laughter and joking at her initial befuddlement]
Mako: [in a disaffected hipster voice] "The fire was so 2008."

For me, this story will never be about ego or politics or outside perceptions, or any of the other things some members of the SFZC community may carry.  In my mind, it's about sandbags, a monk eating a pint of Ben and Jerry's with a spoon, and fields full of flowers you only see in the immediate wake of a fire.

As Gene DeSmidt wrote:

THEY ARE NOT HEROES
JUST 5 PRACTICING ZEN MONKS.....
IN DIFFERENT ROBES !

Plus, this photo is hilarious:

I think my favorite part is Graham's hat (far left). 

Be Seeing You

*that story involves the trial of Bobby Seale, the National Guard, and a brilliant diplomacy move by the Dean of the college. It's a great story. Maybe someday I'll share with you the rendition I've heard over the years.

"I don't think the Inkas had a sustainable empire."

I'm back from llama lland. Time to dive into Space Madness.

Photobooth: it makes my life easier.

Be Seeing You.

Boil Update: I ate cuy whilst in Ecuador. I didn't eat the brain, but I did try to eat the eye. Except the retina/iris/pupil was too hard. I did eat fish eye though. In the case of the cuy, I discovered that I was much less disconcerted by eating the head than friends who ate meat. For me, eating the head is just like eating any other body part. Okay, tongue is kind-of scary. Not going to lie. It was a glorious moment on my trip when this other girl was like, "um...I don't want to eat a cuy head, but once you've finished eating, can I look at your dinner?"  See, people? I AM NOT THE ONLY PERSON WHO DOES THIS.