I was walking in the rain, in the cemetery and weeping. I had a couple of very vivid days wrapped in confusion, a lot of my past life had suddenly arisen in a new context and it threw me for a loop. Uncomfortable, a part of aging and of training in Buddhism. Partly drifting from daily training and having old karma show up more unrestrained/unfiltered. Nothing going wrong. Process.

I was walking and talking into my little voice recorder, a daily way of sort of journaling, and I realized this was an ideal situation. If there should be anyone else walking in the cemetery and they saw me it wouldn’t be some old coot walking in the cemetery and weeping (sad story), but just some old coot walking in the rain and getting wet, not so strange, after all.

My telephone rang and I wrestled it out of my inner pocket and it was my monk friend from Idaho. I told him I was walking in cemetery etc:, and we both had a good laugh about fortuitous circumstance of rain and weeping in public space. I had a hard time hearing him and assumed it was a bad connection on his end. We chatted a bit and I told him I was going through some things but they were still raw and I needed to process them a bit and then I would talk to him and my teacher, a monk in Berkeley and I didn’t want to talk it away by talking to soon. Some things we have to go through by ourselves and waitand abide, for a while.

I hung up and then continued my walk, refreshed. I saw that the reason I couldn’t hear him well was the fact that I had left my ear buds from recording device in, and they blocked my ability to her the phone clearly. Forgetfulness is not encroaching anymore, it’s here, along with a clarity about the past that had been mis-remembered ’til time was ripe.

Life does go on and on, and

One day it will stop but the

Past will still need to be

Reckoned with, somewhere.

If not now, when; is too

Late to ask, but the need 

Will still arise in asking

How can I be at One (atone)

With this, the big mistake?

By being fully and completely.

Mistakes don’t go, they become.

This life, my choice. Questions?