Amazing Gadget!

use it to hold harmonica around my neck while i play guitar and sing.
use it to hold up a book or manuscript while i type.
and -- used to hold ipad while i read ebook or do facetime!

it's a description, no it's a brand!

people love the tiny pictures i take with my instax mini camera .  when they see the tiny picture coming out of the camera, they say "oh it's a polaroid!"
and i say "no it's a fuji" and they look confused.
so after a year or more it dawned on me, they don't know polaroid as a brand, they know it as a process.  so it's kind of like if they said "hand me a kleenex please" and i said "sorry i only have Puffs"

wigs and perception

i went to see a friend who is in the midst of a series of chemo treatments.
she had a cute new wig.
it was grey like her hair, or almost like her hair.
just for fun i tried it on, and to our surprise it matched my hair perfectly.
she said she'd give it to me when she's done with it.

i came home and told john about it, told him it was the same exact color grey as my hair.
he said with surprise "your hair isn't grey"
curious, i said "what color do you think my hair is?"
he said "it's blonde, of course!"

hahahahahahaha 
i wonder if when he looks at me i'm also 25 and don't have wrinkles!

inside a dog

my brain when i am ignoring it, keeps busy and entertains itself in many ways. 
often with a song.
often the song it hums to itself is an attempt to send a message.
sometimes i notice and it's fun to figure out the message.

the past few days it's been telling me a joke, whenever i bother to listen to the brain-chatter.
here's the joke:
"Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend because inside of a dog it’s too dark to read."
usually attributed to Groucho.

like the brain-song messages, it turns out to be a koan for me. i'd been filling out my application for Sacred World Assembly and got stuck on the question about the Sakyong Mipham as my vajra master.

i will for sure then be inside the dog. 

i've been inside the dog before, as a christian in my teens, and yes it was too dark to read. once inside the dog it's so natural to twist everything and make a religion out of it, heehee.  to twist everything to glorify and justify that inside this dog is true and perfect. 

so the question for me is how to be inside the dog and still be able to read. or is it to have the courage to be inside the dog and give up reading?

washing dishes by hand

when i was a child and we moved to a house with a dishwasher, it seemed like a luxury.
i don't have one, now, and neither do, wow, quite a few of my friends if i think about it.
most of them say they enjoy washing dishes by hand.
so now that is the luxury, isn't it?
having the time to wash your dishes by hand while your mind roams free for awhile and your hands play in warm soapy water.
it's twice as nice when someone joins you and dries.