“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” wrote Mark Twin in Innocents Abroad. Yes indeed.

These words of Twain invite me to explore just how travel helps us to fling open the doors and let the breeze of new thoughts, sensations, and visions blow through. It is virtually impossible for me to imagine my life without travel, and I’m deeply grateful I had the opportunity to pursue adventures in foreign lands throughout my life. My confused and dysfunctional mother with whom I had a fractured relationship was really responsible for this, and I thank her for that. I want to look at some peak experiences and examine what was given in those moments. Like, for instance, the prowling around the Colosseum in Rome in search of wild cats to feed, sitting in front of Monet’s Water Lilies, sitting in a boat on the Ganges in early morning, and attending a family cremation in Bhutan.

At the age of 12 or so I had the opportunity to live in Rome with my mother and stepfather. It didn’t take my mother long to figure out that a daily ritual unfolded each day in late morning when women of a certain age, many dressed in black, came to the outskirts of the Colosseum with little paper parcels inside containing their pasta or chicken from the night before. They offered this bounty to the many scrawny, mangy looking wild cats who lived amongst the ancient ruins. I’m remembering the young ones, driven by hunger, reaching up frantically with their little paws, and the older ones who rubbed up against your leg insistently. Our little family soon adopted this habit of being benefactors to the homeless felines, bringing our own leftovers and joining the Roman women in their acts of kindness. Somewhere in my multitude of old black and white photos are some pictures of these survivor cats, of my beautiful dark haired mother bending over to feed them in bright sunlight. A gift of an experience that invited us to join these Roman women in their charitable work. Italy is a generous country, I have to say, after having visited there many times since I was a young girl in the late 50’s. Generous in terms of its ancient beauty and rich history, its magnificent comforting food, and the openheartedness of its citizens. Our whole family was changed by living there: we came to see ourselves as citizens of a larger world and part of a long and formidable history, and we all discovered a love of food that lasted a lifetime.

In Paris I was taught something about art by a friend of mine who brought me to witness Monet’s Water Lilies at L’Orangerie. He was an artist himself and held a deep love for this revered painter who donated these epic paintings to his country at the end of World War I. As I learned to stop and sit and just look at art, I was changed. What I found was beauty beyond measure in an abstract form, you might say, that took me to a meditative place, a place of transcendence. I contemplated the luminous purples, greens, and grays, on the canvases, and I also thought about a life intensely lived and the artist Monet’s dedication to his work. When you hold this thought in your mind, you can’t help but feel reverence, maybe even an aspiration to find in yourself the dedication to speak your own truth in the world. As you age, you realize that one of the deepest purposes we humans can possess is the intention to offer our own creative gifts to the world. The pursuit of beauty is essential to our journey; all human beings are transformed by the sight of something extraordinarily beautiful, for it opens and softens our hearts and allows us to live more peacefully in the world.

It may have been 10 years ago that I had the opportunity to ride on the Ganges at the crack of dawn along with a group of fellow travelers, floating seamlessly through mist as the sky turned from dark gray to paler gray, and we looked to shore to see the citizens of Varanasi bathing, washing clothes, chanting, dipping themselves in the murky waters of the sacred river. It was a spectacle unlike any I’ve seen in my life. In America we live lives inside houses and other structures, occasionally venturing forth to hike in the mountains or swim in the ocean. In India all of life unfolds on the streets, alleyways, and certainly on the banks of the Ganges. You could say the landscape teams with human activity. Some of my fellow travelers were unnerved by the graphic display of this humanity and averted their eyes. They also carried in their minds the horror stories of getting sick in India, and truly the Ganges is (was) a very funky looking body of water! I strained my eyes, instead, to fathom what transpired in the ghats, delighting the brilliant blues, reds, and golds of the saris that shouted out in the morning mist. There were so many stories unfolding here, more than any of us Westerners could fathom… “It is complicated,” a female guide in Cuba told a group of us a few years ago, referring to her country’s mysterious political and social issues, and the same is true, I’d say, of India. The thing these two countries have in common is dire poverty and often a blurring of boundaries between rich and poor. The experience on the Ganges, like the four weeks before that I spent traveling in South and North India, taught me that duality in society can be cruel and heartbreaking, and in India it appears tragically inevitable. Seeing this first hand, as opposed to reading about the caste system in the newspapers or magazines, is a transformational experience. It reminds us that inhumanity and injustice surface everywhere, whether in the dirty cobbled streets of Varanasi or the tidied up neighborhoods of most any American city or town… In order to exercise wise judgment, we must allow ourselves to see injustice clearly.

I had the privilege to travel to Bhutan five or so years ago, and because of a remarkable friendship I formed with Karma my guide, I was invited to attend a private family cremation in the town of Paro. This all transpired on my last day of a weeklong adventure driving the countryside with Karma and his friend, visiting temples, walking village streets, and going on horseback up a mountain toward the Tiger Tops refuge. Karma had heard of my curiosity about Buddhist practice in his country, and shared with me his own attempts at joining the monks when he was a young boy. It was clear that though he never followed monastic path, he was conditioned by the Buddhist way of life, a way that emphasized non-harming, peace, dedication. In the stark and beautiful Himalayan landscape this country is considered unique in its purity of social traditions, its adherence to peace and protection of the environment. You see no police or military, you don’t hear sirens and honking horns, but you do hear temple bells, smell the incense and the pungent curries they offer you to eat. Far, far away from most everything you’re familiar with, you end up feeling at ease and safe here in Bhutan. The cremation I witnessed took over three hours, and it was a particularly intimate experience even though I never visited with the family members. A village woman whose name and story I didn’t know was encased in a meticulously crafted box-like structure of logs. Monks came and chanted and cast mysterious white powder on the pyre, then they lit the fire, and family members dressed in dark blue tunics came to tend the slow burning wood which eventually consumed this woman’s body. Toward the end I had a stark and vivid vision of her, and was sure I could see her whole face before the skull was cracked open to facilitate the burning process. It took my breath away. When I left I was given a gift of a small amount of money for being in attendance. I was being thanked for honoring this woman I did not know. I took away a keen sense of the wholesomeness of cremation, and a new insight about the transference of energy that occurs when the deceased is burned. Such a contrast to our traditions here at home… We keep the funereal process tidy and controlled, in a way, in the interests of moving on and getting over it. Like in India, where life and all its pain and suffering are constantly on display for all to see, the death ritual in Bhutan is faced head on with equanimity, it is included in everything else. The dark exists right there with the light.

If we take the leap and witness that which is different, strange, or scary, we can be changed and our hearts opened. When I think about it, I believe that we don’t necessarily have to get on an airplane and fly far, far, away to have these kind of learning experiences. While I’m clearly a fan of packing my passport and my “stuff” and journeying to someplace far off like the Galapagos or Machu Picchu, I know that we can traverse our towns and communities and reach out with our eyes and ears, with our interest, toward something new and different. We can be curious and responsive to the young man huddled in the park under blankets on a cold winter morning, or the older grizzled gentleman with shaky hands who bags our groceries at Safeway, or the lean and solitary coyote who scurries through the city dog park seeking refuge. I guess what I’m saying is: we can all be “travelers” in our own communities.

Travel is a bountiful, inspiring state of mind that will make all of us better citizens, happier human beings. I hope all of you who read this will turn this idea over in your minds and consider the ways you can open your heart and mind to the unexpected and unknown. I wish all of you great adventures in 2019!

I want to send holiday greetings and well-wishing to all my readers, and especially to the large array of recently signed on followers from far and wide, and let you all know that I bow in gratitude to your curiosity and faith in my blog site. There are many times when I write simply to hear myself carry on about an idea, a feeling, a place….As an only kid, after all, I developed the capacity to be my own very personal audience over the years! It is good to know there are listeners out there, and I want to invite you to communicate with me about what you read here in the spirit of having a conversation. What I would love more than anything is to forge a thoughtful community, especially during these dark and scary times.. There are some of you I know and many now that I don’t know. I’d like that to change. I also wanted to say that in the interests of making myself known in the world and ultimately promote my memoir, Bowing to Elephants, I’m going to be writing not only personal reflections about culture, politics, and family, but also I’m going to do some pieces about writing and the process writers go through to get something out there into the world. Why? Because I find the whole adventure curious, quite personal, and complicated, and because I have a huge regard for all my fellow writers who are brave enough to spill their stories onto the page.

I read an interview recently in the Paris Review with the mysterious and gifted Italian writer Elena Ferrante, whose “Neopolitan novels” took the American readership by storm several years ago. She is a woman who has stayed in the shadows throughout her career, her name admittedly a “pseudonym" and her whereabouts kept a guarded secret. She said this about an artist promoting oneself: “I’m still very interested in testifying against self-promotion obsessively imposed by the media. The demand for self-promotion diminishes the actual work of art, whatever that art may be, and it has become universal. The media simply can’t discuss a work of literature without pointing to some writer-hero. And yet there is no work of literature that is not the fruit of tradition, of many skills, of a sort of collective intelligence. We wrongfully diminish this collective intelligence when we insist on there being a single protagonist behind every work of art.” She went on to say that once her book went out into the world without her she knew that she had “released the words from myself.” I find her argument both reasonable (each one of us is a product of our cultural lineage) and baffling (the odds of succeeding at gathering readers without any publicity help are problematic) at the same time.

Ferrante wrote books that seemed to have had a magnetic appeal and she apparently didn’t need much publicity to become widely read. I’d argue that this is not what usually occurs for today’s writers… Her gritty realism, nostalgia and romance, combined to hit a nerve, certainly amongst Italian readers, and ultimately and amazingly amongst Americans. This entire series of four books ended up on best seller lists. It all seems quirky and inexplicable, sort of like Ferrante’s own interior dense thinking around creative process and maintaining anonymity. I sense that her persistence in staying anonymous has definitely paid off for her. Odd. Why is this? Are we the potential audience captivated by mystery? I know for myself that the more the so called truth is kept from me, the more eager I am to dig in like a dog with a bone to unearth what is “real.” We want what is withheld from us…

When I publish my book next year (September 2019), I will have to do a lot of legwork in advance to have anyone pay attention to it. According to most publishers, this is the way it is in the industry. Writers are expected to show up for interviews, write articles, participate in thematic panel discussions, develop their social media presence, and the like. Gone are the days when you simply hit the road to show up for a “book tour.” Exceptions to that are with the high and mighty, like Joe Biden or Michelle Obama, who could easily sell out any event in any town in this country. It turns out that the crafting of the original book - itself a deep and arduous journey - is not the only work the writer does. You the author must shepherd your beloved creation by various means, and you must blow your own horn and make yourself appealing to large numbers of potential readers.

This business of blowing your horn is a bit foreign to me. I stayed in the shadows a lot of my childhood, and even when in school, I held myself back while excelling and privately feeling proud of my academic prowess. So there’s that cautious and shy part of my story, and then there’s my 20 year old Buddhist practice, which teaches among other things that all beings are without permanent sustainable existence. It’s called “no self,” a tough concept to grapple with. The point is that we see a persona called Mag whom we believe to be solid and permanent; this being is in fact a result of what the Buddha called “causes and conditions.” Since the causes and conditions of human existence are always changing, so are we. We are fluid beings. So, to identify ourselves as “neglected child” or “world traveler” is incorrect because we continually move in and out of these identities. So, now my question is: how do we reconcile this fluidity with showing ourselves off to the world as distinct character, for example a travel writer of deep insights and cultural education?

Or, am I not looking at another element in this whole conundrum? That would be the difficulty of just standing up and saying something like, “hey, please pay attention to me, to my words … they are worthwhile, they will touch you and perhaps change the way you see the world.” Yes, I think that’s it. This tooting of one’s horn, grabbing the stage and saying “yes” doesn’t come naturally to many of us. I’ve known a number of artists who have been pushed and shoved to stand up for themselves so they can then convince people to appreciate their art. Many of them never learned how to do it, and receded into obscurity.… Like I said earlier, it’s complicated this promotion of the self.

There are human beings who never had to think about self promotion, like Jesus Christ whose “birthday” is upon us, or the Dalai Lama, or Gandhi, painters like Diebenkorn and Matisse, or writers like Shakespeare and Charlotte Bronte whose genius screamed out to the public and pulled them in. For the rest of us, there is work to be done to show off our authentic creative selves to the public in such a way that they’ll eagerly reach for our work, because even in this technologically ass-backwards world, we all need the solace of sitting with a real book and losing ourselves in its soft creamy pages, following the journey, or witnessing a piece of music or a painting that lifts our hearts and reminds us what it’s like to be a vibrant, compassionate human being.

What I’d like to believe lies in the hearts and minds of writers out there today struggling to find their audience is the dedication to the craft of telling one’s story, painting one’s unique picture, so that you can touch others like yourself and perhaps change the world just a little bit. If that doesn’t drive people who are swept up in publicity campaigns, then I am truly sorry. No matter where we show up to talk and do our dance, we need to remember they why of it all. Joan Didion wrote long ago: “I write in order to live.” And if I were to continue her thought, I’d say: “I write in order to live, so I may touch others, open doors and windows to see the possibilities of a better life.”

Wishing all of you out there more open windows, some peace and ease, and love…

All kinds of colored lights are coming on in people’s windows now, and baubles are dangling in windows and doorways, and red and white Santa gear seems to be everywhere. The city is dressing itself up for the holiday season. I am seeing more smiles on people’s faces, and hearing more gratitude expressed. Goodwill is in the air… So, you could say, why can we not feel this sense of appreciation and good intentions the rest of the days of the year? Good question. For myself, I feel calmer and more patient these days. I am moving more slowly, trying to stay in the present moment and keep the faith. Though I’m not a Christian, I do believe in the story of Jesus Christ and I appreciate this welcome feeling of camaraderie and generosity that seems to show up at this time of year. I also believe that as it gets darker and colder in the wintertime, it is logical for the human animal to dig down and tap into some warmth and kindness within. A form of self compassion, you might say. There are choices we can make that create that state of wellbeing… While my head is not filled with visions of sugar plum fairies and Santa’s reindeer, it is leaning in toward the comfort of being a reader of books.

I’ve noticed that more and more books are stacked on my dining room table lately — I don’t seem to be able to control my hunger for holding real books with paper pages, turning those crisp pages that often smell of ink, losing myself in another reality altogether. It all began when I was a little girl, an only child … Our home was not dominated by t.v. in the late fifties, so I read books, everything from Nancy Drew to Ann of Green Gables, Agatha Christie, and Jane Eyre. It was a refuge for me to be surrounded by books and to sit for hours lost in stories… The world that surrounded me then was not exactly kid friendly. Books were my true friends, and I remember I harbored dreams of someday writing one…

Today in my early seventies I find myself reading American history for some reason. On one level it makes sense: I always did like to look back. There was comfort and some wisdom to be gained, I think. Doesn't it make sense to place ourselves in a historical context to fully understand the nature of our current condition? Like it or not, we are anchored to our past and to a future we know little about… I am reading both Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, from which Lin Miranda crafted his astonishing play, and an inspiring and dense treatment of American history entitled These Truths, whose narrative begins before we were ever a country. Jill Lepore published this book this year to great acclaim, and I must say it is a treat to hold this 700 page tome in my hands and follow along as she unspools our early days as a country, bringing two profound issues to the forefront: slavery and the oppression of women. She offered in an interview that she saw these two issues as constants in our nation’s history, enduring into our present day.

We are still a racist country — snuffing out the lives of inner city black men and rejecting the immigrants from the southern border looking for some chance of a good life, and we continue to subjugate women in our cities and towns, businesses, and families. The Me-Too movement has reminded us of just how broad this canvas of entitlement is. Lepore’s writing is eloquent without being complicated, and the research prodigious. I am bowled over by the amount of brain work and time it must have taken her to write this vast and complicated story, and I’m so grateful for her work. I want to understand our country’s history with a determination I’ve never had before. Why? Because I sense the knowledge and understanding will allow me to step back from the swirling chaos of our toxic political climate and say, “ah yes … everything changes … patterns come and they go …” It will afford me some balance in my thinking, a perspective that is necessary if one is to endure horrible offenses. There has been persistent cruelty in our young country in the last decades, sometimes just a bit blurry under the surface, and sometimes roaring up and reminding us in the cities of Chicago and Oakland that we haven’t learned how to treat those of different races with basic fairness and compassion. It turns out that no matter how many civil rights laws or gender equality regulations are enacted, we are still a culture informed by our dichotomies: rich vs. poor, black vs. white, male vs. female, powerful vs. weak… This is a painful revelation, for sure.

Context is an interesting concept. If we can see this clearly, we will understand where we have been and where we might go. Of course, our future is uncertain, but if we are able to grasp, to accept the ebb and flow of our story, then we can make informed guesses about what might unfold down the road. What are the chances we can take care of our poor, uneducated? How can we advance women and people of color? How can we make decisions to keep this country safe and out of war? How can we be leaders on the world stage in the name of peace? Just some basic questions, mind you. If we study the choices and mistakes of the past, take a look at the egotism and greed and heedlessness, then perhaps we can we make more enlightened choices going forward. I’d like to think so.

I guess I’m arguing for the educated mind, the mind that absorbs information and then takes that understanding out into the world. My own childhood was driven by a desire to educate myself, to discover what was unknown to me, and happily I still pursue this path. Tara Westover in her amazing book Educated offers a testament to this very same imperative: the hunger for knowledge and insight that seems to be innate and necessary for survival. Under the most horrific of circumstances with a survivalist father and mother, she struggled to find a way to get herself educated. She seemed to me an example of the desperation of women who have been subjugated and silenced in our culture. Which brings me back to a theme in Lepore’s book of women’s alienation as a inexorable thread in our history…

While I often read books for pure pleasure — Elsa Ferrante for example … or Colm Toibin … or Michael Dibdin or Annie Lamott … it appears that during this winter of 2018, in the midst of what feels like a dire time for this country, I’m trying to learn about the trajectory we’ve been on, to grasp the humanity and the cruelty that have come before. I will meet characters that I love like Alexander Hamilton or Thomas Jefferson, and ones that i respect like good old George Washington, and I will also see their failings. As I meet others along the way, I will come to understand that the whole story is one of imperfect human beings with high ideals trying to form the “perfect union” that was fraught and tenuous, weighed down by our all too human failings…

I like this journey because it reminds me that I am part of the lineage of this grand (and flawed) experiment, and that there’s great mystery here in this story. As the Thai master, Ahjan Cha said, “life is uncertain, isn’t it?”

One of the most comforting tools in my Buddhist toolkit, I find, is the phrase from the teachings about the “ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows” that humans are presented with as they navigate their way through life on earth. It helps me when I want to hang my head in sorrow at the dark cruelties of our world: Yemen, Syria, immigrant children at the border, voter suppression in the South, Neo-Nazi fervor against an established order, young black men being gunned down in our cities, and so on… Instead of hanging my head, I can lift it up and think of some of the joys present in my long life: my family, my beautiful home, my animals, my piano, and my good heart and mind that still work at telling the truth. To include the joys means we see the human journey for what it is: a path of many twists and turns, gifts and challenges. And in seeing this, we can utter the words: yes, just so. And as we say those words, we are fortified to go out in the world and make a difference.

I have been blessed to live with a variety of furry four legged creatures for most of my years on this planet. And I realize that most of my animals have lived long and relatively comfortable lives. Since I was a little girl of about six when my parents gave me a Siamese kitten, I have known the mysterious and sweet connection with cats in particular; my mother was enamored of felines and she passed that on to me. When you exist in the moment with a pet, you have the opportunity to love unconditionally and to be loved in return in an uncomplicated way. We all want this, don’t we? It turns out that we humans find this unconditional affection very difficult to experience with one another.

I’m looking across my dining room table now at a very old cat whose name is Jackson, a lean and elegant Maine Coon who has lived alongside me for over twelve years. Despite his shining fluffy Maine Coon fur, he is showing his age. He moves very slowly and cautiously now, and I often catch him staring out into what I would call the abyss, seeming momentarily lost. Then of course I remember that I’m in my early 70’s and can become frequently muddled in much the same way! Or is it that we’re just slowing down, he and I? Jackson and I are definitely old, and in our “elder hood” we go forth gently, treat one another with deference and kindness. Though I catch myself worrying here and there about how much longer this gentle cat will grace my life, I am filled with gratitude for having this beautiful fellow as my roommate.

It’s easier to love a cat than to love another person, isn’t it? People demand so much more, and too often they make us feel that we’re not good enough the way we are. I’ve been haunted lately by how difficult it is to love another human, even though we tell ourselves it’s what we want more than anything. My past feels littered with a series of what I would call “impossible loves.” This theme has been bubbling up in my brain lately, and of course I find myself wondering if there’s another book here… There was the romance with a young Sicilian man six years older than myself when I was only 13 - yes 13. There was the love I tried all my life to find with my narcissistic mother, as I hungrily worked to have her see who I was and adore me… There was the love of a man I fell for during my first months in college whose charisma and bright mind blinded me to any sense of reason. We married because a baby was on the way, and I had no problem loving this beautiful little daughter - that came organically … but I never succeeded in finding reliable love with my husband. There was the love of a man later in life who promised me adventure, excitement, and freedom from all constraints, only to withhold love selfishly and break my heart. Through these disappointments (the 10,000 sorrows) I found things to love (10,000 joys): food, beautiful wine, travel, JS Bach, literature, and exploring my various creative gifts. I went after these things zealously and constructed quite a character.

I was always accompanied on this journey by my four legged friends, mainly cats. Eventually I found a dog friend whom I named Francesca. She was a reddish gold retriever who looked up to me with complete loyalty and affection and traveled with me through many dark incidents. She didn’t require me to be a certain way and she didn’t punish me for being imperfect. Much the same as Jackson, my ancient cat who simply loves me and wants to stick around. This dog Francesca and my cats have been present in my life to teach me one thing, I’m sure of it: love is what matters. Love and closeness and safety. They make it easy in a way, while human beings are far more complicated and carry way too much baggage.

I realized recently that my halfhearted efforts to find a companion on internet dating was a false and hopeless one. False because I wasn’t convinced I wanted another “partner” for life, a person I’d have to negotiate with, figure out, accommodate, worry about, yearn for… And hopeless because the standards I had set for myself were so high that most of the candidates I was presented with didn’t stand a chance of fitting in with my artfully constructed life. There’s a lot that I wish for in a mate: he must love beautiful things (art, music, books), must value peace and equanimity, cats and dogs, must stand up for his (left-leaning) beliefs, must wish to travel the world and eat interesting foods. The likelihood of finding such a fellow does not seem so great. While I’m not a pessimist, I believe I’m running out of time…

So, with the time that I have — and who knows how much that is — I will return to my loving relationships with my four legged creatures, my two cats and one small, very grateful rescue dog, who look to me as though I’m really “it.” We can all take care of each other’s needs pretty well here in my house on a quiet dead end alley in San Francisco, and there’s something to be said for that! We will grow older together, and it will be relatively peaceful and rewarding. It will be enough. Just so.

I was going to write about place as a catalyst for storytelling after I heard Jesmyn Ward speak to this at a writer’s retreat recently. It seemed such a rich subject. Of course, when we stop to think about it, we realize that all powerful fiction and non-fiction is born out of distinct landscape(s), the people whose stories must be told growing up in particular unique geographies and carrying with them certain particular quirks of character and vision. Think of To Kill a Mockingbird as a painting of provincial life in the South in the thirties, or The Great Gatsby as a loving but sad reflection of the Eastern seaboard society in the twenties, or The Grapes of Wrath as a reflection of painful struggles in the Dustbowl of this country during the Great Depression.

The problem with this subject is that when I apply it to myself, admitting that through my life I’ve adopted many various landscapes, I find I have a complicated, sometimes disorganized array of possible stories to tell, some belonging to myself and many to the different characters I’ve met along the way in such places as: India, Cambodia, Italy, Burma, France, and so on... Many lands, many stories, and not enough time, perhaps …

What is really on my mind now, however, is that fires are still raging in northern California, a place I call home before any other, and my heart is heavy. My city by the sparkling bay is still shrouded in smoke and people on the street are wearing bizarre looking masks to help them cope with breathing and moving about. It sometimes strikes me that we’re in some goofy science fiction movie … What happens when I go out with my dog these days is that I smell the burning of houses, I imagine the burning up of human beings and perhaps animals who couldn’t get out of Paradise (ironic name in this tragic scenario) fast enough, I envision the thousands upon thousands of exhausted firefighters who are pushing their bodies to battle this fire, their faces blackened by smoke and their bodies stretched beyond anyone’s imagination of what is possible for humans. So, it’s not just the fact of the smoke draped over San Francisco, the place I grew up in … with the delicious smells of sizzling garlic, espresso, the salt air, the aromatic manicured hedges, pine trees, and oh, again the damp and delicious sea breezes that bless our dried faces, and the fog that softens all harsh sounds and makes us feel quite safe. This smoke tells us that we are in dire conditions in northern California, with drought and denial and broken hearts playing their parts. We are closer than ever to realizing that we and this amazing planet are not invincible.

I have a favorite quote from literature, which goes like this: “Attention must be paid …” It is uttered by Willy Loman’s wife in Miller’s Death of a Salesman, as she cries out that her husband’s lonely and unsuccessful struggle to find success deserves to be witnessed, because he is a human being and we must not turn away from the suffering around us. Yes. We must not turn away… This is why our journalists put up with untold abuses (even death) during these times. They have a mission to tell the truth and not turn away. This is why we must look at the homeless man with a kind smile on our face, because he is real, he is suffering, and he is part of the human family. This is why it’s a good idea to read an unusual history of the United States (Jill Lepore - These Truths) that brings to the surface dire cruelties and inexcusable conditions that have survived over time “under the radar,” specifically the relentless stories of slavery and racism and the systematic oppression of women. We must pay attention so we can understand and respond thoughtfully, constructively. I saw a powerful movie last night called “My Private War,” about the woman journalist, Marie Colvin, who consistently put herself in the line of fire in nightmarish scenarios in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, (just to name a few) so that she could witness that which others would never be able to, so that she ultimately could tell the truth about war. It was a moving and disturbing account of a brave, sometimes self destructive woman who needed to take dire risks in order to feel that she was true to herself. This dedication to danger was ultimately responsible for her death in Syria during a particularly terrifying bombing campaign. I’m positive there are legions of news gathering men and women out there on various dusty, rubble filled battlegrounds who are compelled in the same way, and I must say I’m deeply grateful to them for their dedication to recording the horrible truths of men at war.

The memoir I wrote three years ago entitled Bowing to Elephants is my own intimate document of truth telling, about my alcoholic mother and the suffering she incurred, about not being able to see who I was as a child, about my own compulsive throwing of myself at the world in order to discover some authentic truths. The book’s mission was to affirm that this kind of quest is a worthy one, though certainly not without suffering. What I ultimately understood was that our suffering frequently fades away for a time as we face what is real, both in ourselves and in others around us. We are then able to return to walking in the light with an open heart and an understanding of the consequences of man’s darkest actions.

This paying attention is a brave and worthy choice. It might cause restless nights in the dark when you wish to sleep and recover, it might make others around you uncomfortable with your persistent probing, but in the end it suggests you are in this struggle for the long haul, to be heard and do what good you can do in this life … and to make a difference. To all my California comrades, lets lift our faces and try to look through all the smoke, and know there is deep suffering right now, and that in time the blooms and new growth of spring will come.

Sending lovingkindness out to all those in the darkest part of this struggle…

When you drop your ballot in the box at your polling place or in your mailbox, what arises - at least for me - is the sense that all is not lost. Not yet. Not now. You are joining many millions of your fellow citizens in making your decisions known, you are participating in this challenging experiment called democracy. What I want to say is: you are doing something good, not only for yourself and your sense of civic pride, but you are doing something for your fellow beings in this country as you affirm that we are a body of humans who share commonly held values: health care, economic justice, educational opportunity, women’s rights, preserving the environment, the curtailing of violence and death… just to name a few. Whether you belong to the herd of the elephant (GOP) or that of the donkey (DEM), you share deeply held aspirations with your fellow Americans, and an overarching vision to actually hold hope, and to imagine the betterment of our society.

When we vote, we are saying the following:

-I continue to hope for the best we can do for one another

-I continue to acknowledge that this country is a participatory adventure

-I feel gratitude for living in a country where we actually have the right to vote

-In doing this, I continue to manifest in the world my own deepest values

All good stuff, right? Not particularly complicated when you think about it. And the best part of this act is that it makes you feel really good about your place in the world, it brings a smile to your face perhaps. Or at least it did for me… I am tired of being a cynic and a snarling critic of the extreme right, though they give me ample reasons to respond. It’s hard to imagine NOT responding to the destruction of our environment, the withdrawing of care of our poorest most vulnerable citizens, to the denigrating of women and all minorities for that matter. But in that moment where I let go of my ballot I wasn’t thinking in those terms. Rather I felt free of rancor for a brief and lucid moment, sort of the way I become free of raging feelings when I meditate or play the piano, or walk on the beach. To be free in this way is definitely good for our mental health, right?

Because I’m a Buddhist practitioner, I know that this idyllic sense of ok-ness won’t last forever, and that the dark clouds of division and anger and ignorance will return to cast their shadows. And then again we’ll have to figure out how to hold all the chaos and the pain. But for now, as I devour my lunchtime artichoke, I will relish this feeling of an even tempered heart, a sense that as I voted I joined a massive long lineage of brave people who fought, struggled, demonstrated, and just plain waited in line forever, for the RIGHT TO VOTE.

When we wake up tomorrow morning amidst the likely uncertainty and angst about that uncertainty, let’s remember that the cycles of human history show us a continuing river of change. Things don’t go up unless they’ve gone down, and so on… And as long as we choose to take part in the participatory experiment, we can be assured that change will be upon us, and that we will be a part of that change.

With immense gratitude to all who rose up and voiced their will today, and for those who didn’t, well there’s always 2020!