Fairfax Journey

another comment on the mideast

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Tom Childers

So much has happened this week in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, or more properly, Judaic and Islamic influence in the area. So many have commented, it seems like everyone around this conflict has gotten spun up into their polarization. It’s painful for me to watch. The pain is in the polarization, the finger pointing, the images of death and destruction. You are wrong, no, YOU are wrong. I will spare you the details, which you can swim in through the media.

This conflict has been going on for more than two millennia, back and forth. It was a Judaic region before Islam and Christianity were born, and something else before that. And so, like so many of the parts of our world where civilization has deep roots (Tigris and Euphrates valley, aka Iraq)…history provides many claims to the turf. But it’s more intense since 1945 (or perhaps that’s the media?) Watch the epic movie “Exodus”, and it seems so logical that the Jews would flood back there after millions were killed during the 1940’s (not to mention pogroms in Russia, Poland and Germany for centuries before that). Read James Michener’s fabulous book, “The Source”, and the flow back and forth through the middle ages and the Ottoman Empire makes more sense, and has depth. Oddly, this book, which was written some 50 years ago, offers hope that Arab and Jew, Palestinian — Sephardim — Ashkenaz might co-exist well. After all, they all love the land. It also documents how the resident Palestinians vacated what is now Israel in 1947, as Egyptian and other Arabic forces tried to dispel the new Jewish state. Jews were fleeing Arabic lands too. Then there was the Six-Day War in 1967. I’m old enough to remember some of the savage things the PLO did. In some ways, they invented terrorism.

I find it fascinating that some liberal friends and media (and I am quite liberal) seem to think the Israelis are the bad guys. There are no good guys here, this particular round of violence was kicked off when three Israelis were murdered. It doesn’t make any difference if it was Hamas or rogues or a new secret organization that did it.

There have been some times when the two (or three or perhaps four) sides have been close to peace. But no, the hatred is ugly and fueled by testosterone. Missiles, tunnels, fighter-bomber missions, the iron shield. Fake posts about joyfully killing children. So much suffering, so much poisonous negative karma. Even Yassar Arafat came to the peace table. You want some insight? Read about Moshe Dayan. Testosterone takes us into war, and into initiation. This is a man who had more reason than most to polarize, yet found room in his heart for co-existence.

So now more than a thousand people are dead, mostly Palestinians. Two militarized societies, pounding away at each other. Thank god we reincarnate. How else can we learn that this is the source of our pain?

Posted in Reflection | 2 Comments

urban turkey trot

Posted on May 31, 2014 by Tom Childers

My mornings and evenings have been punctuated by some all-American sound and action for the last couple of weeks. My house seems to be home-central for a flock of wild turkeys.

The action starts right around 6am, with a parade. This morning the parade started just up the street from me, and proceeded apace right past my house. First came two hens, casually wandering down the center of the road, occasionally foraging off on the side for whatever turkey hens find interesting (acorn earrings? dragon fly hats? the mind can only speculate…) Then came the clowns and marching band. Two young males strutted, posed, fanned and pursued, like teen-age body-builders in full tanning and flexing form.

The show continued for a good ten minutes, as though my bedroom were the grandstand. The posing, pirouetting and casual female browsing proceeded with utter dedication, ignoring a passing cyclist and the guffaws from the neighborhood crows. The second clown arrived to make the show truly competitive, while the hens pointedly ignored all. Finally the girls seemed to tire of the browsing, and dove off into the department store that is Fairfax Creek, leaving the marching band in confusion. The sounds died down, and after milling about for a few minutes, the band members wandered into the department store in silence. Appreciative crows landed in the roadway, inspecting the parade route for anything interesting that might have been dropped along the way. Later, I could see the parade resume in the distance, proceeding across the field on the other side of the creek with all the same masculine enthusiasm and feminine disinterest.

The morning parade has repeated every day this week, but is only part of the entertainment that this flock brings. There seem to be about six, three hens and three toms (aack! why are turkeys called that?) There is a larger daily pattern that is bemusing to watch. Every evening just past sunset, they move up the hill behind my house, perhaps do another little parade, then one by one fly over the house into the trees across the street, where they settle for the night. Once I happened to be in the living room just as a tom got up onto the roof with a spooky loud scratching sound, then ran down the slope, clack-clack-clack! to launch airborne and glide into the trees. The noise tipped me off that something big was on the roof, but nothing could prepare me for the surprise of an eight-foot-wide feathered 747 gliding directly over the front of the house, scarcely six feet away from my nose.

These ungainly and laughable birds are surprisingly graceful in flight, with all the majesty and stability of the biggest aircraft. I’ve seen them glide through openings in trees scarcely a foot wider than their wingspan. Earlier this week, the three hens flew with huge synchronized flaps across the street and up the hill just as I was arriving home from work. I imagine these birds are brainless, perhaps because of the silly noise they make and repetitive morning parade, perhaps because we call a stupid thing a ‘turkey’. But they honestly seem well-equipped to their environment, using the hillside for effortless take-offs, and landing gracefully in the tops of tall trees with a single flap.

The best part is living in the middle of all this natural rhythm and entertainment. l am delighted to feel their presence, like the occasional owl and the red-tailed hawk nesting across the valley, the deer trotting down the street in the evening, and rarely, a raccoon peering into the upper windows, watching us fix dinner. I’m on the edge of town, with an unfenced yard that connects directly to open space. Choosing to build a house and live here nine years ago, I had no idea what the reality would feel like, and I am fortunate indeed to be here. Every silly move the turkeys make reminds me to smile, as well as laugh.

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love and fear and fearlessness

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Tom Childers

I had a whole epiphany the other day, sitting with a glass of wine, and I can finally put it to words. Fear is not present.

Funny expression, you can read it a couple of ways, especially from inside the buddhist practice of learning to be present. I actually heard the phrase a year ago, in a teaching by Lama Drupgyu Tenzin. I mean in it all those ways, and perhaps if I share a little inner journey, the realization may land in you as well.

I’ve mentioned fear a couple of times here since Nancy’s passing. During the first year after her death, I became very aware that my own fear of dying is almost gone, that I’m more willing to take risks and take action than I ever have before in my life. That’s a huge change, and if you truly believe in reincarnation or heaven, then you may know that place in your heart where there is nothing to be afraid of. About a year ago, I wrote about it again, when Roger Ebert passed away. Now I realize that coming to grips with death is but the first layer of my fear.

I deeply love the sensory pleasure of my life, the food and cooking, wine and conversation, affection and attachment to my partner. I cannot imagine giving them up. I think about coming to the end of my life, and having to release Pinot Noir, kisses, great meals, hot tubs…all those pleasures I adore. I greedily fill my life with as much of that as I can, as though running from the realization that all this pleasure will end one day.

Ah, but peeling back a layer, I notice fear there. It’s a more subtle version of the same thing. The quality of this fear is different, it is all caused by my imagination of something that has not yet happened, based on my memory of loss that has happened in the past. When I sit here, with my glass of wine, and just open to the moment I have with this beautiful thing, there is no loss and no fear, there just is the wonder of the wine. In fact, the more I release my thoughts and imaginations, the more I experience the wonder, the incredible sensory explosion as I sip. As I move slightly off the moment, and notice a thought and follow it, a soft anxiety arises. And that feeling is fear.

This experience is inside-out for me. I’m so used to identifying myself, my awareness, as my thoughts and feelings. My teachers have repeatedly told me how thoughts and feelings are like ripples on a pond, with no substance or permanence, and they are right. It’s easy to understand the concept. But becoming the pond, and finding that stillness inside where thoughts are not I, is quite different. I realize this is the fruit of my practice, what I practice, and that stillness is fearless. There is no future to worry about, no past memory to cling to. There is only the wine, and the moment of exquisite delight as my sense consciousnesses lights up like a Christmas tree. I do not need to hold on to it, or fear it’s loss. The wine is now. And so am I, at least until the next thought carries me away to places where fear exists.

Posted in Buddhism, Reflection | 5 Comments

las camelias

Posted on May 3, 2014 by Tom Childers

I have adored two restaurants in the last forty years. One is the Pacific Cafe in San Francisco, a haven of west-coast seafood since I was a young teenager. The other is Las Camelias in San Rafael, a Mexican restaurant on Lincoln Blvd. that has been a part of my consciousness since I wandered in with co-workers for lunch in 1979, a few months after they opened. After 35 years, Carole and Gabriel are considering a change, perhaps selling the restaurant. I will be somewhat devastated when that happens, proving yet again the buddhist axiom that attachment creates pain 🙂

When I first came to the restaurant, a slender college drop-out with long hair and a perverse enjoyment of lederhosen, I was a young programmer at Fireman’s Fund in Lucas Valley on the north side of San Rafael. Las Camelias had an open patio in front, enclosed by a low wall, with a tree in the middle and six or eight outdoor tables. My co-workers and I would come for lunch on Fridays, drink a beer or two, and talk about everything. Gabe’s mother worked at the restaurant, and they rapidly developed some of the most delicious and unique signature dishes that anchor their menu. They started to win Pacific Sun awards, and have anchored their block on Lincoln Avenue as a dozen other businesses have come and gone around them. If you go there, check out the Zincronizadas, which are absolutely stunning.

Their story is quite touching and delightful. Carole and her mother survived the Treblinka internment camp in the Ukraine during World War II, and emigrated to Mexico after the war. Apparently she met Gabe on a bus, and they fell in love though neither spoke the other’s language. There is a photo of Gabe as a young man on the wall of the restaurant, and he is indeed a handsome fellow. Carole is quite unchanged over the years, ever slender, graceful and elegant – she is the woman in dark clothing on the right side of the photo, pointing new arrivals to their table. Gabe and I, meanwhile, are both forty pounds heavier, and I’ve gone from a pony tail to no hair at all in the intervening years. Carole is an accomplished sculptor, and teaches clay work on the side. Her earthy clay artwork decorates the restaurant, and many pieces have great stories.

Carole has been a charming friend through all that has transpired, marriage, loss, job changes, and moves. I’ve helped them with their web site, and they recommended the (awesome) stove that I installed in my house. I have several of Carole’s sculptures in my space. We’ve had fine, long discussions about archetypes, spirituality, food and climate change, artwork and molé ingredients. I still don’t know exactly what Gabe puts into his most excellent salsa, dammit.

It’s odd how a restaurant can become a touchstone, a measuring stick for our life. Coming in for dinner last night, I was delighted to see every table full. The Carne Asada was excellent, as always. And I remembered some of the hundreds of prior visits, with co-workers long gone, with Nancy my first wife and Nancy my second wife. With Pathways workshop participants, fellow Mystery School students, women I dated. I came there when living in San Francisco, Mill Valley, San Rafael, Novato, and while working in Silicon Valley, Oakland, Berkeley. I’m sure I’ve brought every single one of my close friends, some multiple times.

If and when they leave, it will feel as though an epoch of my life is coming to an end. Perhaps someone will keep in going, keeping some of the great dishes, and I will still be able to have Zincronizadas for lunch. And perhaps Gabe will finally share his salsa recipe with me.

Posted in Reflection | 1 Comment

loss and loss again

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Tom Childers

I have a friend who passed away last night. He’s been fading for weeks under hospice care, after two years of cancer and treatment, gradually losing mobility and some awareness, but never his sense of humor. I never went to visit him in the hospital, but he’s never been far from my awareness over the last few months. Here are a couple of photos to give you an idea of who this man was.

Dan led a full-contact life, a linebacker-poet if I ever met one. A conundrum, perhaps the most literate meth-addict/felon/recovery case I’ve ever met, with a lengthy police record and equally-long service record. He was widely known to the law enforcement agencies of several counties when I met him, ruling his rough block in Antioch with a baseball bat from his mother’s garage. He was always up for a fight, and his scarred mug and crooked teeth were frightening even before he glared or barked at you. Coaching him was like a gym workout with too much weight, I and others would come away from our interactions shaking. Yet he strove for self-awareness and self-mastery with great intention, and became more receptive with each month and year of consciousness work. After some months, helping him assemble a working computer in his garage one day, I became aware of how literate he was, how much he loved reading, which was a closely-guarded vulnerability. Over the years, I and others started to see his poetry, his heart, and his thoughtfulness more and more. Now I can honestly say, I love his writing, his body art, his crude directness, and his tenderness. We’ve created ritual together, coached consciousness workshops together, and supported each other in odd ways. I helped him with his computer problems, and he taught me how little there was to fear his big crude energy. He would poke at me in some way, then laugh. He was a guest in my home and a drinking buddy on more than one occasion. I miss him, even as I’m relieved that his suffering has ended.

Our common community rallied around Dan lovingly, creating ritual, sitting with him for weeks around the clock as he lost awareness, writing many emails a day with updates, commentary, feelings and requests for assistance. Oddly, there was little email as Nancy was in critical condition for 56 days, relatively few visited, and almost no discussion after she passed, while people traveled hundreds and even thousands of miles to see Dan. I wonder about what was different, even as I marvel at and delight in the outpouring of support he’s received. One big difference is that I wrote updates ever day for the 160 folks who wanted to know what was happening. Another is that we had to limit visitation towards the end, as she was exhausted by too much contact. I held Nancy’s hospitalization with some optimism, even though she was quadriplegic for the whole time. Dan, well, we’ve known this was serious for months, and I think the acceptance of the end of this incarnation for him is more evident. Nancy was also in an ICU, harder to visit, and I imagine it was harder to come see someone who could not talk, kept alive by a half-dozen machines.

Perhaps it’s the nature of the connection our community has had with them. Perhaps it’s the timing. Perhaps Nancy was the first one to go, and no one knew what to do, or how to be. Whatever, it’s a puzzle.

But I am having a reaction that has nothing to do with any of this. I’m weary of loss. It’s not just Dan, or Nancy.

I’ve been the guardian and trustee for my mother for more than six years, as she has faded away thanks to Alzheimer’s disease. She hasn’t recognized me in years, and I accept that. But others go away too. The cascade started in mid-February, when a man in the prime of his life died of the flu, shockingly right after his wedding. I have two good friends who knew him. February 24th, Mark Ketchum, a world-renown bridge architect and fellow BMW motorcyclist in Berkeley passed away after a year of cancer. Then within a few weeks, another close friend lost both his parents, and his partner lost her father. Jenifer lost a coworker suddenly last week. A member of the sangha is critically ill, and so is my next-door neighbor. Several people in my larger circle have been widowed, which strikes close to my heart indeed.

I don’t know where to go with this. I’m not depressed, I just feel weary and open, and perhaps a little numb.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m halfway through my preliminary buddhist practices, and studying some deeper Tibetan writings on “buddha nature” (Tathagatagharba Sutra) and the nature of emptiness, enlightenment and enlightened activity (Nagarjuna’s teachings). Every day begins with a reminder of how fragile our lives are, and this outer experience of loss, over and over, is perhaps cracking some layers of protection away. In the stillness something is forming, I don’t know what.

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parting with roy

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Tom Childers

An era is coming to an end, my faithful steed Roy is going to a new owner. When Jen and I bought Mz. Parker last year, I knew it had to happen, and now it’s time. I’m just feeling the whole shift.

As usual with my posts, there is a story in the background. Nancy’s-brother’s-wife’s-father was a delightful man named Roy Kristensen, a guy born and raised and lived his whole life in Sonoma County. Roy was in his 70’s when I met him some ten years ago, and he worked part time doing small construction jobs and fixing things for folks, I suspect mostly because he loved it. In 2006, a friend of his decided to sell his full-size pickup truck, and Roy very happily bought it, this 1994 Ford F150 just as you see it here. As far as I can tell, it was his pride and joy. Then in 2007, Roy passed away quite suddenly from a stroke.

All of us were deeply impacted by the loss of Roy, a cheerful and engaging man, the kind of guy who always had a twinkle in his eye and a funny story to share. Very knowledgeable about Sonoma history and active in the community, he was born in Two Rock, and I would wager that no one who ever reads this blog will know someone else born there. Hell, most of us barely know where it is. Roy and I talked for hours about the train routes running through Marin and Sonoma, and in fact one of the main routes ran right across the front of my property, cutting through the hill and creating the steep slope that my house is built into. Everyone in the family loved this man, and I miss him still.

Some months after he passed, his family decided to sell this truck just at the time when Nancy and I needed a bigger truck for our house construction. So we bought it, and promptly named it Roy. Roy is a construction truck through and through, with a bed liner, camper shell and lumber rack. The motor is a very well-developed and proven design, a 300-cubic-inch straight six that is smooth and burns no oil after 224,000 miles. There are some dents and scratches, the front fender has been bent down a bit on the left side, but all three of us who have owned him have cared for him well, and the drivetrain and body are solid. No one ever dumped 3000 pounds of rocks into the bed, sagging the frame. No one ever skipped oil changes. It’s hard to find a 20-year-old truck that looks this good and works this well.

So it’s time to let him go, as I no longer need a full-sized truck. I’m contemplating the shift, looking at this as a dream through Jungian eyes. This is a change of vehicles. While building my house, and tending to Nancy and then myself after she was gone, I’ve needed a lot of capacity. Here it is, reflected back, a big sturdy reliable masculine vehicle that has carried cords of wood, a ton of custom-milled cedar siding, stacks of 4×8 plywood, a BMW M3 motor, every piece of furniture and every appliance that is in my home, all my mother’s belongings, forty tons of trash from the construction site of my house, concrete, tile, mortar, Jen’s furniture from her retreat space in Monte Rio…I can hardly remember all the wonderful loads of *stuff* that Roy has moved for me and for us, friends and family. Such capacity I have had, in his form.

I posted him for sale on Craigslist, shared the event on Facebook, and voilá, a friend from the past, an architect renovating a house, needs a construction truck. It’s so serendipitous, we are both startled and delighted. We’re meeting tomorrow, and I expect that she will take him into the next chapter of his life.

Adieu, Roy. But you will keep the tape measure that Nancy kept aboard you, and the fire extinguisher I kept aboard you. If you know about the Enneagram, and know that Nancy was a One and I am a Six, you will smile as you read this.

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unjunking the news

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Tom Childers

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Exploring some of my Buddhist connections this evening, I delighted upon the Facebook page for the king of Bhutan, His Royal Highness Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk. And I immediately found out that one of the dzongs (‘fortress monasteries’) in Bhutan burned almost to the ground in 2012. I had no idea, even though I visited this place ten years ago. What a shock.

This photo from 2004 shows me blissfully unaware that the site will be gone in eight years. I’m as connected to the internet as anyone, an avid reader of news and tracker of things financial and spiritual and political. I read The Economist, I read other news sources from Europe. And I missed this. If you don’t already know, Bhutan was historically rather feudal, with the country broken into (I think) seven regions each ruled by a dzong until peacefully united under the Wangchuks some 110 years ago. This is one of the most important and largest buildings in the country, and it’s mostly wiped out. A World Trade Center loss for Bhutan. How did I not hear of it?

Here is an image of a prayer ceremony carried out a few days ago, on the site. Just look at the ruins. (And admire how these delightful people bring ritual to heal a wound, and create the possibility of reconstruction!)

It seems like third-world news is hard to find in our modern news streams. I certainly know this, it’s hard to find out details about massacres in Sudan, or Syria, or the latest clashes in Anwar Pradesh or the hinterlands of Pakistan. How many fields of poppies are planted in Afghanistan, how are the raw morphine sales funding the Taliban? What is really going on out there? What sources of news actually tell me things I want to know?

(And how much do I really want to know? We are culturally and historically evolved to live in villages, and until 150 years ago, mostly only knew of local events. I’m not sure it’s healthy to be aware of all the disastrous things happening every day all over the world. I really want to be selective, and receive a balance of positive and negative information.)

The Economist is a pretty good place to start. The writing is thoughtful, and topics are discussed with some depth and understanding and insight. It’s based in the UK, so the journalism is anything but sensational, and they tackle tough questions. Apparently CNN International is a good source too, on the strength of this single article about the fire. I’m going to start reading it more.

It’s ironic and telling that Facebook is actually quite a good news source, if you are selective in the pages you follow. King Wangchuk’s page is a wonderful find for me, as I love the country of Bhutan and want to keep current with events there. I get some information by following HH The Dalai Lama, the Karmapa, and Kalu Rinpoché on Facebook – but the news is generally much more specific about their activities, not so much about world events. Blogs by some of my acquaintances are very good; I read insightful commentary by Jane Brunette, Steve Stern and others. Then there is fun stuff like local blogger Alex Castle, Laura Silverman (who I mentioned a few weeks ago), Jessie Wood (Lama Palden’s daughter)…

I digress. Perhaps I’m saying that I like to find curated news sources, and they often slide into more personal commentary – which I enjoy – but does not inform in the way I seek. The Huffington Post had promise, but is now so bloated with opinionated and sensationalistic junk that it’s hard to find the gems.

Have you got recommendations? Please add a comment or shoot me a note if you have a source for national and/or international news with thoughtful, balanced commentary!

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a pleasure of faith

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Tom Childers

I had a heart-opening, delightful and perfect moment this morning, one that I’m sure I will relish for a long time. I found the missing candle holder.

On some level we all live amidst chaos, and I often feel like I have an extra dose of it because I am sorting through boxes and boxes of stuff that belonged to Nancy, my mother, my stepfathers, and some from grandparents as well. As these people have fallen away from my life, I’ve ended up with all the material goods, some treasures, a lot of junk. I tackle it a little at a time, perhaps a box each weekend, and little by little my garages are emptying. It is such a long process, it’s taken a lot of fortitude to keep going. This morning, I dove into a box of Nancy’s that came from under her father’s house last spring, a box that she threw down there more than twenty years ago, with books and junk from her life in LA long before I met her. There is a Kodak camera with film in it, and I wonder about the five ancient photos locked inside on a partial roll of film. There is a dead telephone, more architecture and design books, and a copy of “The Bridges of Madison County” with a photo of her dad from WW II, and a photo of her somewhere in Asia, sometime in the ’90’s, with a Buddha. And Holy Grail of Grails, tucked in a corner of the box next to the phone, coated in a layer of grime and cardboard dust, there is The Candle Holder. The Candle Holder I Knew I Would Find One Day.

The back story is that I encountered one of these, a lovely 2-inch cube of rough glass, almost two years ago. I remember looking at it, holding it, loving it’s beauty and heft and utility and symmetry, and knowing in my heart that it had a mate somewhere in the universe. Nancy had a habit of tossing stuff into random corners – she was a walking embodiment of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in her personal life – so I carefully tucked it away in a cabinet with other candle and incense holders, with the strange certainty that I would find it’s partner. (Nancy would never have bought just one, unless it was a unique item.)

So the thrill of discovery was long-anticipated, completely surprising, and has dropped me into this reverie that you have joined. What is that moment, that thrill, that joy and satisfaction when I pulled this thing out of a small morass of dusty junk?

My first cut comes from my ego, who cheerfully gloats “I knew I would find it!” But there is feeling underneath, something about holding an intention for years, and feeling it come to fruition. I have a deep desire to create perfection in my own ways, making things neat and aligned and symmetrical, so some primordial part of me is gratified by the joining of long separated mates. Ah, there they sit, together again, just as they were always intended to be. There. Now I’m getting closer to the fountain of joy inside.

I’m feeling our separation again. In fact, I’m feeling how life is full of splitting apart and coming together. I kiss Jen goodbye as we go off to work, and kiss her hello as we greet each other after hours or days apart. Divergence creates the possibility of joy and union in the future. My loss of Nancy creates the possibility of reunification. Incarnation into human form creates the possibility of divine union in the future. Perhaps I can feel how we are never really separated, just displaced in space and time.

Or perhaps I’m just happy to have a matched pair of beautiful, well designed candle holders. Whatever, it is, I love them.

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beemer reclamation

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Tom Childers

I’ve got a not-so-secret secret…I have two motorcycles, not one. The black BMW R1100RSL has been my steady date for years, an utterly reliable bike that I’m commuting on several times a week now. She’s pretty modern, lots of power and rubber on the road, great suspension, and ABS brakes for those fun days when it rains. But she’s not my love, she’s just a date (carrying the metaphor too far, to be sure!)

The babe in my motorcycle heart is a 1979 BMW R100S, which I bought as a basket case in 1996 and completely tore down and rebuilt. The epic story is more-or-less encapsulated here, and there are photos of her here on this website. Originally equipped with a pair of loud Staintune racing mufflers, she earned the moniker “Mondo Decibels”. For a BMW, she has presence – not obnoxious Harley presence – something louder than the soft purr of a stock beemer. More recently, the mufflers were swapped to something a bit quieter, yet quite a bit louder than stock.

But the uncomfortable truth is, she has been silent for over two years.

I took the carburetors off this bike in 2011, sent them out for rebuilding, got them back…then Nancy became ill, and I have not installed them. My moto-babe has been sitting in the garage for 2-1/2 years, awaiting resurrection. It’s just another part of my life that I have not yet picked up and reclaimed. Now it’s time.

This morning dawned cool but sunny in Fairfax, and I have a completely uncommitted weekend. After liberal dosings of Kona coffee, I swept the driveway, pulled out the babe and tools and compressor and cleaning stuff and rebuilt carbs…and spent three hours putting them back on the bike. If you are a wrench, you know that carb refits are a PITA. Cables have to be adjusted just so, fittings snugged up, plus there is usually spooge (“motorcycle grime”) in the area to clean off: wire brushes, toothbrushes, ChemTool, Simple Green, or whatever it takes. I’ve been doing all those things. And my hands now look like the the “dud guy” from Mystery Date, if you are old enough to remember what that means.

But the babe is looking good. Cobwebs removed, tires back to proper pressure, gas tank drained and refilled with the fresh, high-octane real thing. Fresh oil. Battery on the charger all day. In a few hours, I’ll try to start her. There will probably be more issues, electrical connections to clean, etc. But tomorrow I expect to have her out on the back roads of Marin. It’s time.

Posted in Geek | 2 Comments

many shades of grief

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Tom Childers

As I come up to the second anniversary of Nancy’s passing, I’ve become quite still inside. Last year, I was reliving the final two months of her life, a horrific journey through intensive care. I’m doing that again, but very differently now. I have a new life, am entering into partnership with Jen, and look forward more than backward. Watching my own transformation, I now have the luxury of asking myself, “How are others dealing with this kind of loss?”

I follow some members of the special club of widows and parents who have lost children. It is indeed an initiation. If you haven’t had this kind of loss, you don’t know.Trust me, I’ve lost several parents, been through divorce…these are great losses, and tear a hole in your heart. But this club is different. It’s kind of the difference between amputation and having a part of your body ripped out of you.

It’s incredible what we do. I’m into a daily Tibetan buddhist practice, and that would have never happened before Nancy’s passing.

The thing to notice is, we’re direct. Our partner or child is gone, and there is nothing worse we can imagine that life offers us. If you want the truth, talk to a widow, or someone who’s lost a child. We will tell you.

So, here are some of the folks. Their responses to grief go in three directions, with considerable overlap.

A few months after Nancy died, I posted an answer to quora.com answering a question about losing your spouse. A young Icelandic chef named Jonas Luster contacted me almost immediately, and we spent four hours on the phone one night. I treasure that evening. He had much wisdom and some delightful stories to offer, he lost his wife two years before I did, and has a young son to care for. This man has led an amazingly intense and varied life since his loss. Some details are on his google+ profile…but his blog is not available due to technical issues at the moment. A bit of a window is available at http://jml.is We shall see if any of his rich journey can be seen on the internet again. My observation is that he was softer two years ago than he is now. His postings are often quite sarcastic.

As a longtime BMW motorcyclist, I’m connected to several major websites, and recently got pointed to theosasisofmysoul.com. Ara is an avid biker I’ve never met, who lost his 26-year-old son in 2004. I have no idea of the details. I have no idea what happened to his wife/the son’s mother. But he writes in a wonderfully clean and transparent way, and how can you not love a brindle pit bull with a helmet that says “Bite Me”? He apparently went off on a seven-year journey with his dog, on a very cool BMW motorcycle sidecar rig, and his evolution is right there on his web site. For example , see http://theoasisofmysoul.com/2007/01/about-packing-and-how-we-live/ If ever there was a solitary journey of grieving, this is it.

And then there is Laura Silverman, author of gluttonforlife.com. An awesome writer about sensory pleasure, she posts every few days and I follow every word. There are recipes, observations about food, seasons, beekeeping, drinks, health, and a dozen other topics in her blogging. I love how she has clearly allowed her loss to open her to beauty and joy in all forms, how she seems to live with an intensity and presence that feels familiar to me. Life is short, and every moment is an opportunity not to be wasted.

If only we could land in this awareness without massive loss. I’m drinking fresh-ground Kona coffee as I finish this, remembering yet again how delightful it is to be born into a human body.