same as it ever was

I scrounged out an old journal from the Camry’s hiding places on my way into Starbucks Sunday morning. At a table I opened it up and came to this entry, dated October 6, 2025:

“Everything so alive. Walking deliberately, softly – like ‘Kinhin?’ The morning alive with birds, hawks, sisters, cousins. Rarely possible to be so lazy. Cows in meditation, only sleeping. Every weed, wildflower, stalk of tall brown grass doing the twist, soft morning breeze. Women with dogs – free, free, free – ignore ‘Must be leashed.’ Jets, overhead flight path, coming, going. Every single rock asks, ‘Would you like to hear my story?’ Yes. Oh yes.

‘Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.’ – Hakuin.

‘My mind is slipping, loosening. Of this there is no doubt, no debate, no exaggeration. ‘Not as academic abstraction, but at the level of actual experience.’”

Save for not coming across any cows in the Rose City yet, all this could easily, mirror-like, have appeared in my Morning Pages last Saturday, and even this morning.

Here’s the magic journal, purchased from a sidewalk vendor in Barrio Logan, San Diego, some while ago.