January 19, 2011

It's hard to imagine that we'be only been here for two weeks. Our routines are completely different and our environment is completely different. And we have been so involved each day with setting up our home. And we are only beginning to become a part of this community.

Last week we had drizzly warmish weather. All the snow that managed to stay on the ground melted and we spent most of the time at work: Catherine was at the Clear View Project books and I was trying to sort out my work space and learning where things were.

We've got into our rhythm of sitting, twice a day. We're doing our pm sitting before going to bed. So our day begins with am zazen and ends with our pm zazen.

Last Thursday we headed into town after breakfast to shop for some specific things, which we mostly got. In the process we found two wonderful places: an unfinished furniture store and a bookstore. The bookstore was a book lovers delight: old antique and rare books and the kind of new books Black Oak would carry. I couldn't resist a book of Atget photos and the new Wendell Berry essays and Tony Judt's "Ill Fares the Land." I had planned to buy them from Amazon, but am so happy I spent more to get them from J. Michaels. It's a place I have to spend more time in. Catherine says if I do I should leave my wallet at home.

It was rainy, generally not too hard, mostly drizzly showers. On the way home in the late afternoon I wished I had my camera. The look of the pastures and bare trees with the hills rolling up in the mist was wonderful. Just experience it, don't try to grab on to it.

The scale of things out here is pretty small when compared to the Bay Area. An example that came up Friday: just as we were sitting down to lunch the power went out. I dutifully checked all the breakers, nothing blown. Then with my old touch tone phone I called the power company (Blachly-Lane Electric Co-Op), Cynthia answered the phone and I told her our power went out. She immediately said that they had to turn it off to change a transformer and that it would be back on in 15 minutes. And by golly it was back on in 15 minutes. Try that one with PG&E. I didn't even have to wade through phone menus and being told that my called may be monitored to ensure the quality of service. Maybe Cynthia's boss isn't interested in listening in on her conversations and figures she knows how to do her job.

Then there's the mail. As I said in another post the mailbox is half a mile from our house. So we walk down the hill to check the mail and put things in the box for pick-up (putting up those little red flags). Well, when there's a package that doesn't fit in the mailbox the woman who delivers the mail drives on up and beeps her horn.

Yesterday we checked out the Low Pass Cafe for breakfast, just four miles from us next to the Low Pass Market which makes a Seven Eleven seem like a supermarket. Food was cheap, the coffee ok, and I had enough that I didn't need lunch. 

Being at the end of our small lane (a one lane gravel road) we don't see any traffic. When someone does come up it's pretty exciting. Today (Tuesday) a car came up, I went out to see who it was. A woman waved out the window and yelled "Happy New Year from your meter reader." Now that was fun.