382. Cherry Blossom Festival 2022 & Time

      

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Time, again 

Day 745/290 - 4/1/2022 

I’m caught up with everything published in Bloggity. Which means that I now have to start posting again and really catch up. I also may get around to my chronological review of Pirenne’s book. Always worth the effort.

I’m really enjoying my “fetal” perspective on celebrating birthdays. The wisdom of age can be a wonderful thing. 

Day 757/302 - 4/13/2022  

I’m happily working in the Bank Cafe after a solid two days of working the first Cherry Blossom Festival since 2019. I was very cold the last day but otherwise working the event in my seventies was no different than from my sixties. I have added a new exercise to my daily routine to make it easier for me to climb into trucks. We will see how that goes.

The event itself was smaller than usual with fewer food vendors. Since this is also the warm up event for me -- the first greening work I do this season -- the lighter load was appreciated. And none of us will miss the parade that is not being held next Sunday. On the other hand, the person acting as the end-of-the-day crew chief now needs more help than the previous person did, so I have to work longer than I have in the past. From a half hour to a full hour on Saturday. Such is life when you work for a group that almost inevitably loses its best workers over time.

It was nice to work again with three of our other regulars. Two of us happened to approach the seme ecostation at the moment a festival goer was dumping her food related trash. She got it so wrong it would have been amazing if we hadn’t seen it so often. Our eyes met in acknowledgement of what we had both seen, but neither of us bothered to say anything, what’s the point? The great thing about wearing masks is that they hide our facial expressions for the most part. The eyes can still reveal a lot. Another one of us was trying to work with the food vendors to get them to sort their own trash properly. He couldn’t see my smile as he reported this. These particular vendors are among the worst we deal with and I’ve learned that the most you can hope for is that they bring you their mixed bags so that you can properly sort them. And that is my job.

There were lots of great dogs at the event and so many people now have chest or back carriers for their smaller dogs. It’s a pleasant surprise to be eye to eye with so many dogs as I pass through the crowd. And so many Akitas. I prefer the Pitties, but Akitas are more appropriate to the context.

I also noted that the little cafe on the SW corner of Sutter and Buchanan, where I used to eat breakfast on occasion back in the ‘70s was closed. There were posters in the windows wishing the owners a happy retirement. So little is left now from the SF businesses I knew back then. Of course that’s also true about the business I frequented in the ‘90s. 

Day 763/308 - 4/19/22

On Time - We will see how much this is a call-out to The Magic Mountain...

This month has been the first time since 2019 that I’ve worked both weekend days twice in a row. Physically I’m fine -- all my exercising paid off, in some ways my legs are stronger than before and I’ve added a new exercise to address the way they are not as strong as before -- but I feel like I’ve gotten behind on housekeeping and errands and like. Just this morning I had to remind myself that I’m semi-retired (and I live alone) so it really doesn’t matter. But I also found myself almost envying pandemic time of mid-2020 when I had nothing but time on my hands. Now I try to squeeze my fitness work into everything else whereas then I tried to spread out my workouts to give me more things to do. Rather than napping.

Hans’s situation was different in that he had staff to deal with what takes up most of my time: shopping for and preparing food, housekeeping. But his situation, once he eased into life on the mountain, was not unlike my semi-retired situation. This is what most incensed Settembrini. Aside from his “taking stock,” it didn’t much matter if he did a thing today or tomorrow or not until next week or next month. 

If I didn’t prefer to work here (the Bank Cafe, where it’s warm and expansive) rather than in my tiny ground floor garret, I would have almost pandemic time on my hands. This is like imagining how much money I could save by preparing all my own meals. Maybe later... if necessary. 

Cherry Blossom Festival update

The second weekend of CBF is now past. It was surprisingly busy. I did my usual thing with the vendors and had that situation under control early. Can’t say the same for the situation on the other street where we were still picking up piles of bags as my shift ended. I took advantage of my “senior” status to clock out and go home on time when the others were working overtime. While I did still have to get out my building’s trash -- remarkably contaminated for some reason -- the real reason I didn’t want to stay was that I think it’s absurd that they hadn’t done a better job of breaking that street down earlier. I’m sure this had something to do with all the idiot vendors, but I’m pretty sure most of those bags had been sitting out there for hours. 

Anyway, my part of the event went well and I’m all ready for a near normal season of waste diversion.

201. Don't Wait

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Don't wait - From The Five Invitations

p18 The Death in Samarra story, again.
p21 Yea! The story I keep telling about the sand painting at the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park back in 1991. He's using it while talking about change and the impermanence of all things, but I use it to talk about work and the value of doing things, even ephemeral things, well. Different perspectives on the same thing, I guess.

He also writes, "Each moment is born and dies." Well, yes and no. It might be more accurate to say that the "moment" is an illusion -- that everything is either in the past or the future. "Now" is a fiction. Perhaps the point of meditation is to take you out of time entirely, into the instant between. The place where Paloma's flower petal falls and Levin scythes.

Sometimes you need to turn the page... I mean literally, 

p22 The museum staff viewed the mandala as an irreplaceable work of art, a precious object. To the monks, the mandala was a process whose value and beauty existed in its teaching on impermanence and non-attachment.

In an everyday sense, we have the same experience the monks did in making the mandala when we cook. I love baking bread -- the measuring, the mixing, the juggling of pans, the kneading, the rising of the dough, the bread browning in the oven, the cutting of the loaf, and the buttering of it. Then the bread is gone. We partake in a mini-celebration of impermanence with every well-prepared meal consumed with enjoyment.

And I always like to recall that I would not have learned about the mandala if the crazy woman hadn't tried to destroy it. She was a key part of the story. (I'm not going to mention it all the time, but Ostaseski continues to only mention Gauri virtues. The crazy woman was clearly under Kali's spell.)

Writers who can't read?

I had "Rhinestone Cowboy" stuck in my ear earlier today, which got me thinking about musicians who can't read music, like Glen Campbell and Tory Amos. Campbell was just a performer, near as I can tell, but Amos and others also create music. 

You would think that there would also be "writers" who work the same way, but I can't think of any. Maybe Homer. 

The Five...

p52 Remember what I was saying about how Now is an illusion? 

We speak of living in the present moment, But where is this moment to be found? Is it a nanosecond that punctuates the space between past and future? To paraphrase St. Augustine, now is neither in time nor out of time. The elusive present moment is not measured by the tick-tock time of a clock, which we humans invented, nor is it separate from past or future. There is no time line, at least not as we conventionally think about it.
...

p53 ...The present moment includes all time; it is the all-inclusive now. The present moment could best be described as the flow of life. We are continually being shaped by it, and we are shaping it through the way we meet and respond to it. 

Don't wait is an encouragement to step fully into life. Don't miss this moment waiting for the next one to arrive. Don't wait to act on what is most important. Don't get stuck in the hope for a better past or future; be present.

I think he's already mentioned the truism about never being able to step into the same river twice, but now, I think, we are being asked to swim in that river of change.

I've finished all the sections in this first chapter, "Don't Wait," but I need to go back and review something from earlier in the chapter. The subject here is identity and if transformations that precede death (or accompany illness) are of value in general or just in this context.