CrankyBuddhist   the learning never ends …

A little more thought on words having power.

I realized that after the age of 50, there seem to be a few American phrases that have dropped out of my everyday usage. Phrases like “Kill me now” when something so boringly unbearable happens. Or telling a friend that “When I start acting geriatric, just take me out in a field and shoot me.”

Nope, those are things I don’t say anymore.

I realized that no matter how long I live, how much time I have left, there isn’t enough life left to be saying such things, in my head, or in public.

Sometimes it’s when I’m in the dirtiest, grittiest places that I get really in touch with living life. I think that’s why, if I am going to live in a city, I usually seek out gritty neighborhoods. My current digs in Berkeley are really too nice. But my current housesit is in the gritty and very dirty barrio of the SF Mission District, which I happen to love. This place makes me feel alive.

The only thing missing is an organic produce vendor.

After hearing a presentation given by Phil Cousineau at Book Passage in Corte Madera the other night on the subject of The Art of Pilgrimage, I started blogging my own ‘deep’ thoughts about travel. Something that is not new to me, but I usually write about an individual place as a sacred spot, rather than as the journey being sacred.

Anyway, Cousineau acted as a trigger for this, for which I am grateful and here are the links to the two posts I’ve done so far:

Tourist, Traveler, Pilgrim

Soul Travel