Back again after more travels. By train, not plane, so was not directly subject to the ashes phenomenon.
Appreciated greatly having nothing in particular to do, truly vacating. In the sunny streets of Amsterdam and along its innumerable canals, I was not so much wandering as just being where I was. Every shifting patch of sky, stone, earth, water, light an altar.
Stepping in to visit Van Gogh, Vermeer, Rembrandt, I found them this time in my belly and heart. They came pouring in, luminously alive stroke by stroke.
Return to Paris like summer, the city mine as ever and yet new again.
Truly, greatly vacating
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
After a long period (seems so) of being "off" news (papers and tv) caused by being sick and although working hard for a kind of "exam" in teaching yesterday (hopefully the last one in that life) I am to tired to sleep being not able to enjoy the simple things like my garden in full blossom, the smell of "flieder" in the air even in the barn when I went to close the back door there….all that broken airplanes, volcanos, not flying airplanes, sunken ships spreading oil which I missed to read / know about "in time" come as a solid wave of suffering, a concentrate of destruction by reading "old" news-papers of the last three weeks.
Feels as far as wars in the middleages and as unreal as the death of my dad which now is a month and two days ago. In all that ongoing "things to do" there is not much space for being sad, not many people who share – but a lot of continous "daily business" taken more important then the real important things, death and what has to be lived before…for the first time I am protecting myself by not sharing with people, people who are insisting that their daily problems are more important then my sadness/sickness around death. I don´t want to hear "unserious" condolences packed into sentences which finish with the question if I know the solution to their daily problems…..just want a hermitage now to be sad and embrace myself.
Vacating in amsterdam might be a good idea to, later.
there could be more people who are able to hug others which are just tired.
And the texts here for me are a form of that hugging the tired ones. the difference between reading the so-called news and your scribe for me is that your precise and honest descriptions of "small things and events" are in a way healing – it calms me down like sitting on a cushion ( I am even to tired for that actually) and prepares me to finally go and sleep – perhaps it is because in the smallest things there are the "really important" things not even hidden.
In this teaching thing yesterday came up a short sentence written on a sun-dial (I can´t translate, my english isn´t good enough): "immer die erdbeeren pflücken, immer", which I just would like to share with you. thanks for writing, thanks for being there! TdE