Just one of the many, many gems at www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com, a blog that I actually have to pace myself reading because I laugh so hard I’m in danger of peeing my pants. Other favorites include this one, this one, this one, this one, and after seeing this one I’m pretty sure I did pee my pants a little, which was apropos.

I was reading the New York Times Sunday Book Review this morning, and saw this:

Paulo Coelho’s novel “The Alchemist” is already a record-holder: with editions in 67 languages, it has cemented Coelho’s position as the world’s most translated living author, according to the 2009 Guinness Book.

I rolled my eyes. I’d wanted to love that book. I’d loved Veronika Decides to Die a decade ago (which is now being turned into a movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar!). I just couldn’t get into it. Slow, slogging, boring, and so full of New Age pap that I could barely keep myself from quitting it altogether. The one thing I liked about the story was the idea that we choose who we are, but that wasn’t enough to make it interesting. The first thing I did when I finished was stick it on my Paperbackswap.com account. I felt guilty about it, unable to muster confidence that my experience of the book had been valid, when “everyone else” thought it was so wonderful and life-changing.

So you’ll understand why I had to laugh when Will Smith was quoted as saying it was his favorite book, and yet:

“It’s real metaphysical, esoteric nonsense,” he said. “But I feel very strongly that we are who we choose to be.”

I’ve been validated by the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, yo! What more do I need?!

This is a test post that won’t allow itself to be deleted. I’m over on the WordPress forums working on it.

Daisies at the Volunteer Park Conservatory in Seattle, Washington

I got a message from Flickr that someone had added this photo to their gallery. I didn’t even realize they could do that – apparently it’s a new feature. They were creating a gallery of Colorless Flowers, and for mine they said:

Such a dynamic B&W photo. The range of tones really make this photo shine. Goes to show great lighting can make or break a photo.

I’m extremely flattered, yet while I don’t want to make it sound like all I do is point and shoot (okay, really most of what I do is point and shoot), much of that dynamic lighting is fairly accidental. I don’t think too hard about what I point my camera at. If I shot a gun the way I shoot a camera, there would be little death, and a lot of missing limbs.

Sometimes I think that if I worked at it, I might get to be quite good at this whole taking pictures thing, if so many of my from-the-hip images are better than average. But then I remember the photography class I took in college; the second I was told what to do and how to do it, I stopped taking pictures altogether, a hiatus that lasted several months.

Sometimes I think the best way to keep doing what you love is to just keep doing it.

And I still like the original the best, I think.

I haven’t been getting email at my ISP, nor Gmail, for the last 24 hours. I’ve tried tech support at my ISP, and they’re stumped. This means all personal mail, LJ comments, Facebook stuff, email lists – it’s all been muted. I’m going to try and enjoy this opportunity for electronic silence, but there are a couple things ya’ll should know:

1. Game night is on tonight! House opens at 6:30, games begin at 7:00, per the usual.

2. If you need me, send a text message to my cell phone. If you don’t have my cell phone number, email cheesepuppet (at) yahoo.com, my very old account which ought to work (hopefully!), and I’ll reply that way.

Even before we began packing boxes, a primary personal goal for moving back to Seattle was to find a spiritual community. I’ve leaned (see what I did there?) toward Buddhism for the last twenty years, without actually  committing to a sangha or even a lineage. I have a small library of books that range from Zen to Tibetan, and a zafu and zabuton that sometimes get used. I’m the most accomplished, lazy, armchair Buddhist you’ll ever meet. Except that this isn’t much of an accomplishment. My ass is getting tired, and it’s not from all the meditating.

In the first week we lived here, I made my own Google map of Local Buddhist Stuff. Then I decided to try the closest locations of two different lineages; Zen and Tibetan. First would be a visit to the Blue Heron Zen Community, and after that I’d visit the Sakya Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism (yep, it’s where they shot Little Buddha, a story based on true events, although many of us remember that film simply as The Movie Where Keanu Reeves Had A Really Strange Tan).

Blue Heron Zen Community

At Blue Heron, I chose the Guest Night. Greg and the kids dropped me off, a tall house near Northgate Mall. There’s a hike up a hill, and at first I wondered if I had the right place, but then I saw the back door; a line of shoes. I don’t know why that delights me so much. A small token, something we all give up before we enter. Of course, it keeps the floors clean, too. Buddhism is practical, in a thousand ways.

I met Eric Nord, a teacher, who welcomed me and showed me where to put my sweater. I liked him right away. He has a very genuine openness about him, as if just the space around him is a refuge from the trials of every day life. There was one other person there for guest night, a young man. After donning guest robes (Look at me! I’m official!) the two of us followed Eric upstairs, and arranged ourselves on cushions. We spent maybe twenty minutes chatting, mostly going over posture and breathing and our past experiences with meditation. I felt comfortable, even confident. That is, until all these people began filing in, and Eric explained we’d be meditating with the sangha for their evening sit. PANIC. He got up to get something, and I stood up, following him toward the door.

“But I can’t sit,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked me.

“I mean I can’t sit. I mean my record is something like seven minutes. I can’t get past seven minutes. If you make me sit here with these people, I’ll crawl out of my own skin. My head will explode. And your white walls are SO LOVELY.”

The room was filling with people, arranging themselves. I’m sure they could hear me. I looked around, hoping to see someone giving me the “thumbs up” sign, or smile, or just anything that said they’d been there too. Instead, expressions were serene, and unreadable.

Eric laughed. “You can do this,” he said. Or something encouraging like that. Then he said, “If you have to get up, just rise quietly and go outside, and I’ll come out and make sure you’re okay.”

In the end, I sat through the entire meditation period, which included chanting (in Korean!), a silent walking meditation, and two sitting periods of 13 minutes apiece. My head didn’t explode, and the walls of the zendo are still white. When it was over, everyone went downstairs, while I sat and talked with Eric and the other visitor for awhile. Eric asked how it’d gone. “I hated it,” I said.

“You hated it? Really?”

“Oh, it was awful. It was torture. I’m pretty sure I did everything wrong. I couldn’t remember how to breathe, and I kept looking out at the tree, even though I wasn’t supposed to.”

He was unfazed. He said I did amazing for someone who’d so much trouble sitting before, and he was right, it was a personal best. The torture didn’t faze me much either. I’d read enough to know it was normal, but of course it’s a lot different to read about how cold the ocean is than to leap off the boat. Later, when Greg picked me up, he asked how the meditation went. I told him it was horrible, awful, the worst 26 minutes I’d had in a long time.

“You’re going back, aren’t you?” he said, more a statement than a question. It was the same tone he has when he sees me in front of a slice of pizza. “You’re going to eat that, aren’t you?”

My answer was the same. “Probably.”

Sakya Monastary of Tibetan Buddhism

But I didn’t go back. I didn’t get that far. A week later I went to the Sunday morning meditation at the Sakya Monastery, and it was love at first chant. Jason and Beth went with me. Just driving up to the building, I felt like I was home, a sensation that only increased the longer I was there, even though I had no idea what was going on half the time.

The shrine room at Sakya - thanks to Wonderlane on Flickr for this beautiful photo!

Beth spent her hour in their Dharma School, which is like Buddhist Sunday School. Jason and I spent our time upstairs in the shrine room, listening to chants. I tried to keep up, but much of it was in Tibetan, and I got lost a few times. I didn’t mind. It just felt right.

Toward the end of the service, the Dharma School class filed in, the kids doing their three prostrations, and then sitting down on cushions in front. I was straining to see Beth, wondering if she’d look back and search for me too, but she was watching the Rinpoche, her big eyes going between he and the other lamas seated near him. Someone had given her a mala to wear. Later I asked her if she’d enjoyed herself, and she said it was THE BEST, like the BEST THING EVER, and I almost asked her if it was better than pink unicorns or chocolate chip cookies or white rice with soy sauce, but instead I just asked her if she wanted to go back. “YES!” she shouted.

“Me too!” I replied.

And so we are. I went back this week for an orientation, and joined formally as lay member. On October 4th, I’ll take refuge, which is a ceremony where you declare your intention to live as a Buddhist; “taking refuge” refers to taking refuge in the three jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. That probably needs more explanation than a Wiki link, but I’ll get to it later – I’m already up too late.

I have rarely written about Buddhism in my own life, mostly because it’s been so personal, and because I’ve never felt like I was very good at it. I’m horrible at meditating, and I’m attached to everything. Why now? Well, when I turned 35 this summer, I decided that my motto for this year was going to be GO. That’s it. As in, GET OUT THERE. Go do the things I want to do, and stop planning to do them.

I also recently read, What Makes You Not a Buddhist, in an effort to see whether I was kidding myself. Had I  spent twenty years developing a fondness for prayer beads? Or was I truly on a path that deeply resonated? I wouldn’t suggest using any one book as a “test”, to see if you belong to one spiritual path or another, but keep in mind I’d read several dozen books before this one; and I found this particular book to be incredibly useful. Concepts I’d only barely understood before became suddenly clear, and I felt so grateful to Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse for his wisdom. When I finished reading, my decision to take refuge felt even better.

So, there it is, or here it begins. What’s been an interesting journey up until now is getting a lot more interesting.

I got this notice from my university today. I’m no longer a student, being that I’ve moved a hundred miles away and am taking yet another break from college so I can ruminate on the nature of existence (SO CLOSE TO WRITING MY BESTSELLING BOOK!), but one of the things that happened right before I left was a massive budget cut. My favorite anthropology professor was laid off.

And apparently the English department was eliminated completely: 

Jason sent me email a couple weeks ago, a forwarded message from the Friends of the Conservatory, asking him to please come to their plant sale and buy plants last Sunday. I’m not even sure he included any commentary, because he didn’t need to, because he knew I’d be ALL OVER THAT. And so I was. While the kids were visiting Grammy and Papa in Ellensburg, we went to the Conservatory, and we brought the van, because I meant business.

We managed to recruit our friend Laurie, who also didn’t need much coaxing, being that she’s getting a degree in landscape architecture. I have a lot of friends like this, a surprising number of green thumbs who walk into a place like the conservatory and are able to pick out the names of things without reading the tags. And they pronounce everything correctly. I’m amazed and impressed with this ability, and liken it to something divinely bestowed, or maybe tied into their genes in utero. It’s not that I don’t like knowing which plants are which, I just don’t remember all the varieties that well – and then there’s my inner child, who doesn’t want to know. She just wants to be in awe and leave it at that.

Of course I took pictures. The whole set is here, but I’ll post a few of my favorites:

These plants have wee buds inside! I was enthusiastic about these. They’re bromeliads, which is latin for CUTE LITTLE PURPLE BABIES OMG OMG!

This one eat children WHOLE! Okay, maybe not children. But it eats mice whole. Which leads me to think there are some pretty stupid mice out there. “Oh hey! I bet I could totally crawl to my death if I went in there! LET’S TRY IT!”

This is a rock, with some tiny little plants growing on it. There was no tag nearby, I’m pretty sure this is just Random Green Stuff Covering A Rock, which means I should make up my own latin name for it. I’ll call it: Rockus Coverus. Botanists? You’re welcome.

Our fiddler crab molted for the second time a week ago, and I took out the shell, placed it on a piece of green construction paper, and took some photos. I didn’t realize how beautiful and stark the image would look when de-saturated, but wow! Pretty nifty:

Did you know that if a fiddler crab has lost its claw or leg due to a fight or accident, that a new one will be there after it’s molted? 

The more squeamish may want to avoid this photo, although it’s neat too. 

Want a fiddler crab of your own? You should be aware that they’re caught wild, not bred in captivity, so if you’re against that sort of thing you won’t want to get one. You should also do some online research, which we didn’t do – we trusted the pet store employee. Having been a pet store employee years ago, you’d think I’d know this was a mistake, but I was exhausted that day, and the kids wanted some pet crabs to soften the blow of having to return a “pet” turtle back to the wild that my son had picked up on a fishing trip with his Grandpa……and there starts many a tale of family pet woe. 

We won’t have fiddler crabs again, and I wouldn’t encourage others to keep them either. They can’t be raised in captivity; their life cycle requires the larvae to develop in deep ocean waters. They are very wild, and they don’t survive well so far from their natural environment. Ours died a day after this last molt, which was its second molting. It was the last of three crabs we bought at the same time, which have all kicked the bucket. We tried to provide a great environment, but there’s only so much you can do. 

If you choose to keep one anyway, the most important thing to be aware is their need for saltwater: 

The fiddler crabs found in pet stores are most likely semi-terrestrial brackish crabs, which means they need some salt in their water as well as access to air and dry land. Unfortunately, many pet stores keep fiddlers in a freshwater aquatic set up, and recommend the same to new owners. They may do fine in a fresh water and fully aquatic set up for weeks, but will eventually become weak and die. If possible, find a store that keeps them in brackish water, or wait for a new shipment so their time spent in fresh water is minimal. Look for crabs that are active and have all their legs and claws.

That’s an excerpt from this page on Fiddler Crabs at About.com. It’s worth noting that the author is a vet, and she still couldn’t keep her crabs alive. So beware – these likely aren’t great pets for kids, and one could easily make a case that keeping them at all isn’t very ethical.