Reflections at morning rain
after yesterday's hail and the day before yesterday's sandstorms
spring's arrival in Beijing



My grandparents always talk about the weather. If dinner conversation during infrequent visits languors, the weather topic of weather looks plum. My Yorkshire colleague claims weather is required conversation at his family's dinner table. Wow, what surprise outside the window after days of sandstorms and hail that the tiles of the courtyard houses should be wet and a tree in bloom! Rain in the desert. So I turn to piddly things like updating my blog and photos of "Arm & Hatchet" baking soda packages. Good stuff.

After a late night of AA deadlines, I woke up early for an interview about the April 1 Jane Goodall UCSD event and CLC conference call. For a moment, I forgot other looming deadlines. These morning silences hunched over statistics and emails and listening to beautiful Buddhist poet-singer-song-writer-friend Daisy May forgetting my good fortuned curse of being keenly interested in these fast times are maybe the closest to what I am.

Fast (by Daisy May, from the album "Mother Moon")

I've been away from myself.
It's time to get back to what I'm used to.
All this runnin' around.
Makes it hard to do the things I need to.

Can you see the change in me?
The way that I'm worn down from all of this shifting.
Can you love something that isn't there?
All of this running around is getting me nowhere.

Fast..............................
Fast..............................

I've been entertaining thoughts of monkhood lately...before tech is embedded in the skin. Scant time left to pop away from our globally-integrated individual enterprises. I still try to walk as if in a meditation cave, but the draws of city life and householding drag me into the turning wheel.

The birds are quieting. The city stirs. The magpies are out and appointments set. Let's hope, in our age of global climate change, that time for reflections on the millennial seasons is here for a good long while.

Labels: Beijing, reflections, seasons