Aborigines and my Thursday night group!

The book "Mutant Message Down under", has a different way of looking at the life we are so accustomed to living and it shows the contrast in how the civilized and the ancients live. It is said that the Aborigines have no names. Well they have names but their name is there talent: Taylor, Tracker, Star-gazer etc.

In my Thursday night group there are two teachers, a drummer, a doctor, a person who flys alot, an heiress (at least I think of her as an heiress as she lives a charmed life), a minister (who rarely shows up as she is very busy), and a bookkeeper, and a would be fashion designer/ massage therapist, and a friend who's aged parents consume her days (she too rarely shows up) and two former teachers, who now have plenty of free time.

I am one of the active working teachers. My job is to keep a karate group interested in a subject that breathes me. Hard to believe that I get paid for what I do and that after 37 years, teaching classic traditional karate is like breathing. I believe I would want to leave the earth plane if I no longer could share my talent for giving someone with a burning desire to learn, the gift of a lifetime of movement and the ability to turn around and teach that ability to others.

In Okinawa there are old men who do karate, and no one ever says, "You are too old to do this." The old karate men are revered.

I have no role model to follow. I don't know any women approaching 70, who own a karate castle on one acer in the middle of no-where.

I enjoy teaching a martial art that is also a daily practice. I guess you could say, I am a woman pioneer in a man's art or perhaps it just doesn't matter that I am alone on the bleeding edge!

The expression keep moving forward, "Zen Shin" (The battle cry of the Japanese in WW II) is easier than the mulling over of looking back. In ten years from now as I approach my 80's, I expect to be teaching and I expect to be healthy, happy and if not....I hope to be dead! All is well!

I married a sugar daddy!

 

It's Monday.. Lately I have been taking the time to do something by

myself on Mondays. I like to plan it and go someplace new. Today

I drove to Melbourne and enjoyed shopping at a church thrift shop.

It was really fun to find a few treasures but I especially liked making

the purchase at the end. I waited while the woman in front of me

bantered with the cashier, a ninety something year old gentleman,

wearing thick glasses. He had a posture that was very bent over.

(I love old men!)

Anyways:

The woman in front of me at the check out line was saying

to this old man:

"Okay I hope you give me a really good deal. I worked very

hard finding these idem's...maybe even a loan"?

and the little old man said:

"A loan? We should be asking you for a loan"!

Ha!

I thought that was very funny.

Next it was my turn.

He added up my tally. A shirt for one dollar, a wooden sign

for a dollar

that read:

"Peace to all who enter"

and

some stickers for five cents.

The old gentleman said to me as I pushed the two dollars

and fifteen cents toward him on the counter.

"I hope you have enough to cover this!"

and I said:

"Oh yeah....and there's plenty more where that came from.

I married a sugar daddy"!

More about the cat poster

It happened again only this time the missing cat poster
is on the telephone pole as you turn onto my street! At
least I only noticed it today. This poster is just like the others
with a blurred phone #...I told the story to a friend of mine
and she asked me to write somemore. As I am writing now,
I am sobbing uncontrolabe...remembering that feeling of not
being able to connect...that awful feeling of loss. I am remembering
when my son left for India the first or was it the second or third
time? It wasn't that day but maybe a week later I saw someone
who looked just like him walking down the street. Young, tall,
thin with long hair and a back pack. He looked carefree and on
his way to somewhere. This sobbing is like the feeling I've had
when my dad died and then again when I lost my mom. I am
remembering the inabillity to hear their voice or look into their
eyes. He's gone. He's really gone, it's like he's dead and it hurts.
I know it's just a feeling, a remembering but still it hurts. Funny
thing is, my son is sitting in my kitchen right now (on the floor)
drinking a smoothie and I asked him to go take a look at the
sign on the corner and he looked up at me and said: "No. I'm
drinking my smoothie right now!" Well I'm not sobbing
right now as I'm reading my notes from yesterday and I understand
all about "anicha" impermanence. At this moment I am happy
and feeling really good. Actually it's kind of fun to be inspired by something and write about it. This year Shane returns to India, trip # 7.

 

 

Lost Cat poster on a telephone pole

Early morning before eight, I went for my artist date, a walk around the block. Earplugs in and eyes wide open. I see a sign on a telephone that looks like a "wanted dead or alive" poster, it reads:

Lost cat.
Reward
(there is a color photo of a big, black furry feline, reclining)
and the phone number in red.

The poster is sealed in plastic laminate. The phone number however is blurred. Maybe the rain seeped through where it was stappled. My gut reaction was..."How interesting, hummm.... there is no way to connect once the cat is found." Then I saw the poster again on another telephone pole and I thought how sad...this poster's phone numbe is blurred too. My eyes got a little teary but no niagra falls!