School's out, so I may have some more free time for a bit. Until June 4th, anyhow. May be around.

I was up in Jemez this weekend and had a really amazing time. Will be up again rather soon for a longer period of time, can't freakin' wait.   

Well, sort of a new goal. A new goal for Zaadz, how about that? I've had this goal for about a year now, since I realized that the only way out of the horrible cycle that I was in was to rely on myself to help myself. It has always been frustrating to me that I cannot help others. This has come up time and time again in my life and manifests this way: My friend is sad. I am happy. I cannot give happiness to my friend, I cannot make him or her happy. All that I can do is tell a joke, give them a hug, try to help them sort out their thoughts, and hope for the best. Hope that they decide to be happy. Hope that they allow themselves to see the good and the beauty that is always there but commonly overlooked, especially by people whose frontal lobes are at the same developemental stage as mine. (Some refer to these humans as teenagers, but I find that said term holds certain connotations that are largely unflattering, although generally an accurate stereotype.)

I find that many people who try to help others (especially those trying to help people my age) are continually frustrated and feel like they are getting nowhere. This is because people who are my age, and, indeed, people entering their third, fourth, and even seventh decades of life still do not know that their happiness is in their hands.

I'd like to raise my children to know that this is true. It's said to the point that it is cliche, and has lost all value, but I sincerely hope to be able to show people that they can have a good day, if they let themselves.

I got my letter of acceptance to my first real job on Friday. I will be working at a camp this summer. I was a camper there for four years, and I loved it. The people there helped to show me what a wonderful place the world can be, if you let yourself see it. I cannot wait to give back to the community that I loved so much. More than anything, I can't wait to be there, being the good example for once, rather than another one of those teenaged pill-poppin' tools that I would otherwise be this summer. Lifeguarding and strifeguarding, sounds like an excellent way to spend my summer.

Do yourself a favor; help yourself.

I recently (and finally) watched Trainspotting. Now I know what everyone was ranting about. I thought it to be amazing, cinematically. There was really a lot of great direction, expression, and what I want to call "daredevil stunts" on the writers' and director's part. Latent with symbolism, and all in all a satisfactory portrayal of opiates, which is really an amazing thing to say about a movie. It was honest, brutally honest. In my mind, it neither promoted nor bashed heroin. It instead created an excellent documentary of the heroin experience, complete with blissful nods, irreperable constipation, and horrid withdrawl complete with  psychosis and that disgusting need for more. I thought that it really brought out the whole internal conflict about drugs that had been lying dormant, abandoned, and ignored for a little while. It also got me worrying about some select people in my life, their futures and mine. It was just a thinker that is now on my list of really enjoyable movies.

I wrecked a car driving home from the pet store a few weeks ago. Despite the fact that the hood of my car had nothing to attach to anymore and my car looked as though it had already been compounded, the glass fish bowl that I had just purchased remained intact (thanks to my neglecting to remove used swim towels from my car). The next day I got a ride to another (closer) pet store and bought two African dwarf frogs. I got a male and a female.

Male African dwarf frogs have a distinguished hump behind their shoulder blades. I think it's pretty freaky, myself. It feels like a weird bone poking out of them, but apparently it's completely normal. For this reason, I named the male "Quasimoto", or "Moto" for short. Just now I was contemplating changing his full name to Iron Frog Morimoto... but that's another story.

I have a few girl names that I really like, and I mean a very few. One of them is Dagmar. I met a 3 year old named Dagmar in August. Both of her parents are monks and her mom was living at The Bodhi with her and her sister, Mars, while I was there as a working student. I think that her mom is an amazing person and ended up naming my female frog "Dagmar", or "Dags" for short (as Jim called Dagmar).

So, I guess the moral of my story is, I love these little guys. Every day when I'm sitting in my room I look over and they're floating around, doing something cute or silly (for frogs, anyhow), and it just makes me smile. I'll feed them and they'll slowly float up to the top and grab the food, float back down, rinse, and repeat. I like knowing that they're better off now. And I like thinking about how many blood worms are in their little food container. There's about a gazillion, give or take. It's amazing.

I got to The Bodhi fairly late (for Jemez Springs) on Friday night. Wasn't in until 9, give or take. Did the usual things, unpacking, making a bed, getting robes, a flashlight, and a clock, dropping off the fruit of the errends I'd run for them in the kitchen, and all of that. Everyone was sitting in the Zendo, so I went into the student room and engrossed myself in some good ol' Zen-related cartoons. People got out of the Zendo, Hosen (vice abbess and general mother-type) came in to say hello. I was in the Sutra Hall the next morning at 5. The only people there were Hosen, Shade (Tenzo), Ian (some college kid), Chris (Chris wasn't sitting because he put his back out. I'm going to say he's somewhere around 30 or so. Note that another Chris comes into play later the next day, so for clarity we'll call this first Chris "Chris I"), and a woman who was there to arrange flowers. Her husband was apparently around, too, but I don't think that I ever saw him because I don't think he participated in anything. Which is a shame. He probably would have liked it.

Hosen showed me how to iron something that was going to be used in the ceremony the next day, so I spent some time doing that. I also spent some time helping in the kitchen (I generally do whatever grunt work there is to do; dishes, chopping, juicing, etc). I think that there is no better work practice than helping in the kitchen. I'll probably expand on that at some point.

Then we had what was supposed to be a silent lunch (I think), but the flower arranger lady ended up talking and needing to be showed how to use a bowl set and things, so there ended up being some conversation. It was odd, because I've never been there on an occasion when a meal that was supposed to be silent was interupted. I mean, it's not Sesshin or anything, we weren't in robes. It just always strikes me as so genuinely nice that Bodhipeople just roll with the punches when someone does something out of the ordinary. I'd forgotten how much that happens at The Bodhi, having only been there during Sesshin for the past few months.

Anyhow, in the afternoon (and this is New Years' Eve, by the way) everyone sets to work on putting together luminarias and scattering them around the grounds. Two men who Hosen is friends with came and helped out with the luminarias, as well as a guy named Alan who had to be 70--but man, was he going strong. A crazy guy. As in, insane. As in, telling war stories about his time in Wounded Knee. The two guys were a bit on the sensitive side and I could tell that they felt a little pressured by Alan to get things done quickly and efficiently... but in fairness to Alan, we were way behind schedule and the luminarias needed to be out by dusk. Alan later approached me and asked "Are *you* angry at me, too?" I assured him that I wasn't. Anyhow, I should note that the luminarias make kinhin amazing.

Ian and Shade and Chris went to work on the giant bonfire. People began to trickle in for dinner and the sit that was going to be 8-midnight.

Fast forward to the sit.

I had a good seat about 6 down from the Jiki. It felt pretty damned good to sit but I was a little distracted now and again because about half of the people there (and there were probably about 40 in total) were fairly new to sitting, if they had ever sat at all, and were having trouble sitting still and being quiet. It was funny because I was more or less directly across from the Shika who kept hearing people moving around and would occasionally be disturbed enough to look at them, but he never said a word.

Aside from the occasional disturbance, I was in the zone. The bell kept coming unawaited, and that is a great feeling.

After three sitting periods the men went to formal hotsprings. They got a half hour. Then the women got a half hour. It felt amazing. There is nothing like stepping into natural hot springs in the middle of a great sit. And I think that I was probably in the top 5 most comfortable people with being naked around other people of the same gender who they don't know well. It just fit. I wouldn't want to get naked with most of these people for no reason or anything, but it was fine.

Then we had another 1 sitting period and then we went out to the bonfire where we all got a chance to say something if we wanted to... it was an open forum, it wasn't a "go around the circle and say something nice about the person to your left" excersize or anything campy like that. It was nice. Next was a tea service, then the sitting was wrapped up and we all went over to the dining hall for a paaaaaaarty. Con sake! Kai and Giegan (Hosen's sons, 3 years older than me) and some of their friends were there, so Ian, Chris II who is probably around 23 years old, and I hung out with them in the kitchen. Alan got pretty drunk and kept kissing people and talking about how the teepees in Wounded Knee were magical so the 5 inch long bullets from the machine guns that were being fired at them didn't puncture them. Alan kept referring to me (jokingly) as "that girl who hates me". It was cute. I helped clean up and was in bed by 2.

I was up again and in the kitchen by 7:30. I love working in the kitchen. It's one of those things that feels so productive. Everything in such a small community feels really productive. I think that ultimately I will probably do best in a community like that. I tend to gravitate towards them, even so far in my comparitively brief life. I thrive in the sort of setting where you know that everything you do is really, really making a difference. You can see the difference. You can feel the difference. You don't have to search for it. If I hadn't cut up the pickled lotus root, it wouldn't have been sliced, and it wouldn't have been eaten. Or it would have been sliced but everything would have run much less smoothly. So, I worked in the kitchen until we went to the ceremony. The Sutra Hall floor is bamboo mats and we don't get zabutans and my legs are always completely awol about 10 minutes into sitting in there. We chanted a bunch, although we left out the long one chant. The abbot of the Albuquerque Zen Center, Seiju (who is Kai and Giegan's dad and Hosen's former husband), as well as Hosen spoke. Then another lunch party. I got sliiightly drunk off tiramisu (that I watched Shade and Hosen pour 3 bottles of Kalua into) and spoke with Chris II about Naropa. I guess he went to Naropa for 2 years before dropping out partially due to some substance abuse problems. I'm not terribly interested in Naropa as far as where I want to go to college. I still was interested to see how his perception of it matched up to mine. They were fairly similar.

I washed dishes for an hour and a half after lunch, then I packed up and headed home, feeling that great Bodhi buzz that I always carry out of that place. And it wasn't the Kalua, it'd worn off by then.

Wow, that was long. I should really work on that brevity thing. Or... should I?

Yes, another blog. I wonder who, if anyone, will read this. I wonder if I'll ever have anything worth posting. I can promise that this blog will be completely free of angst.

New Years' was nice. Met some good new Bodhipeople. Worked hard, played hard, sat deeply. Very refreshing. Very nice. Definitely a celebration worth going to next year.