cats in the attic

Monday — Up into the attic space I’ve rented, have a place to sleep, sit zazen, and type fun things the next 30 days. Being an attic, I have wacked my head five times the last few hours. Landed in Portland at 1p and couldn’t move things in until 5 when the new landlady got home. Used the in between time wisely, moved most of my California credit unions money (not much, not nothing) into my original credit union here, which I have always kept, where my social security lands, and took advice and opened a nine-month CD – again, not much, not nothing. The woman who helped me was the same woman who helped me and then-wife Susan open our credit union accounts in 2011.

I also went to the Rhododendron Garden and bought a pass for the rest of the year, walked as if I could do it blind-folded to the far reaches and my sacred bench. I took the Rhody bench. $35. I traveled to my favorite Starbucks over at Burnside and 28th, only to find it closed. Wah. So I cruised across town, as if I knew the way, and into the only other S’bucks around, bacon egg bites and a promise they’d be getting to know me.

My back hurts, my legs were shaking, my heart pumping overtime, still managed to attend my long-standing Tuesday night Koan gathering, though the truth is I wasn’t really there. Life, life, life, life, life.

It’ll be weird (so Portland). It may be marvelous.

Sometimes the attic shakes when cars drive past down on Cesar Chavez.